The Business

Style and Technique

Iain Banks’s style in «The Business» is marked by refined conciseness and subtle irony that permeates the narrative. The author’s language is flexible and precise, masterfully blending businesslike dryness with unexpected bursts of imagery, allowing the reader to feel both the cold luxury of the corporate world and the heroine’s inner turmoil. Banks skillfully employs interior monologue, revealing the psychological depth of his characters through their reflections and observations. The dialogues are lively, full of subtext, and often serve as tools to expose hidden motives and tension between the characters. The novel’s structure unfolds as a series of episodes that flow smoothly into one another, creating a sense of continuous movement and dynamism. The author deftly weaves in flashbacks, allowing the past to organically influence the present, while details of the corporate environment become not just a backdrop but an active participant. Banks’s literary devices—irony, allusions, a subtle play with genre expectations—lend the text layers and depth, transforming a business thriller into an elegant meditation on power, identity, and human nature.