Two days ago I decided to kill myself… Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive.
Everything that follows is…just to try and explain.
Daniel Weir used to be a famous – not to say infamous – rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He’s made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he’ll regret forever (However long that turns out to be.) Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold on to them both, though not to much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted – and who can blame them? And now Daniel Weir is all alone. As he contemplates his life, Daniel realizes he has only two problems: the past and the future. He knows how bad the past has been. But the future – well, the future is something else.
‘The great white hope of contemporary British literature’ Fay Weldon
‘Engagingly told, cleverly constructed’ Time Out
‘Glittering pockets of wit…Banks is undoubtedly a natural’ The Independent
‘The most imaginative British novelist of his generation’ The TimesESPEDAIR STREET
Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa’s six-sided columns and Fingal’s cave; or I might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.
