CANAL DREAMS was published in 1989
Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly.
Instead, she chooses to travel to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal.
But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters and it is not long before Hisako's ship is captured.
Soon the atmosphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on her cello...
Great Minds Beg to Differ! Iain was often quite critical of Canal Dreams but it is a novel with many fans. We present the case below for your judgement:
Iain Banks (writer) for the Prosecution: “This is probably the weakest of the books. It’s okay, but it’s the one I’m least proud of, and the book I found the most difficult to write. I was in the wee flat I had at the time on the South Bridge in Edinburgh. I’d keep the word processor on all day, sit down, look at it, go away, vacuum the flat... then at midnight I’d have a whisky and think, ‘I might as well go through what I did yesterday’ and then I’d work through to dawn, but drinking vast amounts of whisky... it’s the only book I’ve written under the influence of drugs. Canal Dreams was just too far outside my scope. I had intended to go to Panama, but the US was starting to destabilise Noriega at the time. I couldn’t afford to go to Japan and so I was working from guide books... writing a middle-aged Japanese lady cello player was probably a little hubristic. One of the problems of the book is that it would be so easy to turn it from being left-of-centre to being right-of-centre, simply by removing the ending. That’s why I don’t want to sell it to Hollywood. I’d sell it if Oliver Stone was interested, there’s nobody else I could trust. But he’s been there and done that.”
photo credit: Vincent West for Reuters
Sam Neill (actor) for the Defence: “I must have read pretty much all Iain Banks, and Iain M Banks to boot. I cannot think of a more enjoyable writer. It helps that I am a sci-fi fan, and he was one of the very best. But Iain M was eclipsed by the great Iain, in my view anyway. I adored The Wasp Factory and The Crow Road – two of the greatest novels of our time.
“The overlooked one though, I thought, was Canal Dreams. It would make a terrific movie. It is just as topical now as it was when it appeared, perhaps more so. There is a love story, along with terrorists and hostages, great locations – mostly in the great lake in the middle of the Panama Canal – and it was thrilling. I owned the rights, briefly; I would like to have produced it and had it directed by someone great, like Martin Campbell, and played the lead. Alas, it never happened, can’t remember why. Too late now. Someone else should though!”