Customer Reviews

The Crow Road

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While I won't go so far as calling this his masterpiece (mostly because he's still fairly young and his real masterpiece is still lurking within him somewhere) this is probably his most consistently enjoyable and amazing book and the best one to thrust upon family and friends saying, "See? See? He is a genius." All of Banks' novels (yes, even Canal Dreams) have something to offer the reader, but previous (and future) novels all were quirky in one way or another and while his writing and plotting was so good it didn't matter, sometimes it felt like the oddness was masking what he really wanted to say. Not so in this book. He focuses on the people of Scotland, specifically the McHoan family and peripherally the Watt and Urvill families, all with different social and financial backgrounds, all with family members as different as the people you know. His characterizations are amazing, about a third of the book is told in a third person perspective while the rest is told by middle son Prentice . . . yet every character feels absolutely real, even the people who only show up for a few pages. All have different ideals and beliefs and ways of living and the fun is watching all that clash. The first third of the book might turn some folks off at first as Banks takes his time setting the background, shifting backwards and forwards in time and showing the main two generations of the family at different stages on their lives. Once you get used to it, it's not that difficult to figure out who is what and what period of time you're looking at, and he does a brilliant job at making the sections echo and inform each other, so even though they're out of sequence they feel like they're in sequence. For me, these sections make the book, as he details some of the magic of growing up in Scotland as a young lad, and an excellent job of showing one generation growing older and doing its best to make way for the incoming crew, and so on. His people and their relationships feel real and I wonder how much of this was taken from Banks' own life, but honestly it really doesn't matter. Maybe he made it all up. Who cares? It takes up a huge chunk of the novel but it's so well done I don't think I could stomach removing any of it. There's also a central mystery to the book and the later portions of the novel deal with it specifically, and that's where all the little bits and hints he dropped in the early scenes comes into play. But in the end it doesn't even really matter, and the mystery itself never overtakes the story of people and their families just living. This novel works on almost every level, on a literary, emotional, symbolic level, he crams everything he can into it (since it is basically about life) and all of it works beautifully. It makes for almost compulsive reading and the characters go beyond resonating into almost becoming real, so that when any of them die, it feels like a real loss, but the book merely mourns and moves on, because in the end that's all anyone can do. I also like how the book leaves questions unanswered for the reader to ponder, just like in real life when not everything ties up as neatly as we'd like. In case you haven't figured it out from my heaps of praise, this is probably my favorite "regular" Banks novel (Use of Weapons is the best Iain M Banks book) and comes with the highest recommendation, it's like nothing else he had done and yet it's undeniably his work. It gives me great hope that when he does come out with his absolute masterpiece, it's going to be truly amazing indeed. But for now, we have this.

I have only read two Banks novels. The Wasp Factory was pretty unimpressive. Very dark and twisted (which I enjoy), but the story was a bit weak and there was really nobody to root for.

The Crow Road, on the other hand, was a truly superb novel. Beautifully written. Dark and funny, great setting, with very interesting characters. The setup may feel a bit tedious but once the action starts it becomes a real page turner. For people who haven't read Banks, this book has similiar feel to Ian McEwan's "Atonement", and Donna Tartt's "Secret History." (Both FANTASTIC novels). And I would put this novel in their league without hesitation. After the disapointment of Wasp Factory, Banks has shown his true colors with the Crow Road. Read this book!!

Warning!!! Spoiler here!!! Stop if you get "spoiled" easily!!!


There is even a sub-plot about the main character's relationship with a friend/love interest, that in many other books could have ended up being very "sappy" and ruining the edgy-ness of the tale. But Banks brings it forth with surprising subtlety and it totally works with the rest of the story.

I really enjoyed this offering from Iain Banks. The only other book I had read of his was The Wasp Factory and you could not get two more contrasting books if you tried. This impressed me even more that Mr Banks was capable of mastering two such diffeent genres with apparent ease.

Where The Wasp Factory was horrifying in places this book was heartwarming. I felt the human relationships between these interwoven Scottish families were so absorbing the characters almost leapt off the page. At first I found the broken narrative a bit hard to follow, I even had to reread the first few chapters to fully clarify exactly who was who. Once done however I had no problems as we jumped generations from one paragraph to the next.

The central story of Prentice and his struggles with his father, his religious beliefs, the love of his life and his family history was wonderful. The thing I enjoyed the most about Mr Banks' writing style was the dialogue, it was packed full of witticisms and often hilarious scenes, as well as endearing moments.

The plot of the missing Uncle Rory did at times venture more towards Mr Banks' horror style but only as it applies to hidden family secrets and guilt that can manifest itself into horrendous acts against those we love.

If you want a story of family, friends, betrayal, passion, love and humanity with just a touch of mystery thrown in, then the Crow Road will deliver every time.

After reading The Wasp Factory and the Bridge I was hooked on iain banks and wanted to read more. The Crow road was nothing like the novels I had already read but it was sheer delight to read something so charming, human and real. As well crafted as his other novels are (I have consequently read all the non SF novels) they lack the feel of 'the Crow Road' which is on a lot of levels less complicated than his other novels. I received this novel as a Christmas present and so had the pleasure of solid reading time, no interruptions and I can easily say that I did not want it to end. The endearing nature of Prentice (the narrator) was addictive and identifying with his lack of luck added to his character. My one, solitary critiscm of the novel would be the slightly ambiguous start, which to be perfectly honest faded from my memory about a third into the book. However even this is no big fault as it is worth getting past the tedium to reveal a human, novel beautiful and emotional with splashes of colourful humour that makes for a stunning read.

I reccomend it.

This story opens with our erstwhile, coming of ager Prentice McHoan at his Grandmother Margot's funeral. She's about to blow up, he's wearing one black sock, one white. Prentice has come home to the Scottish town of Gallanach for the funeral from university, where he's mostly spending his mind on drink, death, sex, drugs and, of course, himself.

Prentice is so into himself, he doesn't see what's going on around him much of the time and to say the least, he has relationship problems. Imagine how this affects him when he finds out the love of his life is his brother's girl. However, I should mention Prentice has neglected to declare his love. Further complicating Prentice's life is the fact that his family seems to die off in quirky ways. Gran fell through a roof, dad is killed by lightning as he climbs a church lightning rod in defience of God.

Prentice's Uncle Rory has been missing for a decade and Prentice decides to find out why. Is he alive? Dead? Just gone? Prentice is determined to find out, but meanwhile he has his life to get on with in this humorous, dark story about love and morality and so much more.

Many years ago I bought my first copy of this book at London's Heathrow Airport, was half through the five-hundred pages when we landed at JFK. I changed planes, made it just in time and I finished the book just as we were landing at LAX. Back then Mr. Banks shifting the timeline in the novel bothered me quite a bit, but now that my timeline has shifted quite a bit, I'm not bothered at all. I've read this book about a dozen times and each time it's as if I've never read it at all, so good it is.

Reviewed by Vesta Irene

Iain Banks first novel, The Wasp Factory, was published in 1984. In the years since, he's won critical acclaim, topped best-seller lists and has even written Science Fiction books under the cunning nom-de-plume 'Iain M. Banks'. He's also seen this book, "The Crow Road", adapted for television by the BBC in 1996. At the time, I was only vaguely aware of Banks - however, having stumbled across and enjoyed the BBC's adaptation, I was determined to pick the book up as well. I'm glad I did - as much as I can remember enjoying the show, I think I enjoyed the book more.

The Crow Road's central character is a young Scot called Prentice McHoan. A Star Wars fan as a boy, he's given up his attempts to master the force and now studies history at university in Glasgow. It would be fair to say, however, that he has more interest in alcohol, drugs and sex in general and the beautiful Verity Walker in particular. Prentice's key relationship, however, is probably the one he has (or, more accurately, doesn't have) with his father, Kenneth. Rather than Glasgow, most of the story takes place in and around his home village of Gallanach - visits home are fairly regular for various parties and funerals. Most of the supporting cast is made up of his own family, the Urvills and the Watts (friends to the McHoans over several generations). Fergus Urvill is not only Kenneth's brother-in-law, but also a lifelong friend. (Very good friends, in fact, based on the amount of abuse they give each other). As boys, Kenneth and Fergus were also friendly with Lachy Watt, an uncle of some Prentice's best friends : Ashley, Dean and Darren.

Due to a falling out with Kenneth, Prentice usually stays with his Uncle Hamish when he comes back to Gallanach - the rift between Kenneth and Prentice being caused by a difference of opinion over religion. However, not only is Uncle Hamish certain there is a God, he's also invented his own faith. Another uncle, Rory, an author and television presenter, hasn't been seen in 8 years - some believe him to be dead. Prentice, meanwhile, has a suspicion he's still alive while Kenneth seems strangely sure of it. The curiosity about where he is and what has happened to him simmers in the background until Prentice tries to find out what really happened to him.

The sections of the book that focus on Prentice are told from his point of view ("when I started to understand the lyrics of a Cocteau Twins song, I knew I was wrecked"). The remainder is told in 'flashback', about various different family members, and is written about them ("It was the last time Kenneth ever saw Rory"). I found it a little strange to begin with, but - once used to it - I found it really added to the enjoyment of the book. I'd look on it as less of a story, and more of a book about a group of people that strange and / or funny things happen to. That may sound a little strange, but it's a hugely enjoyable book and one that I would highly recommend.

The Crow Road was one of the most charming novels I've read in a long time. The storyline was original, the characters were round, and it was riveting and interesting to read - all 500+ pages of it!

This was the first novel I'd read by Iain Banks, so I didn't know what to expect. His descriptive powers are truly first-rate, however, and he has a remarkable gift of being able to capture the mood of an environment with only a few well-chosen words. The locations were described magnificently, and he managed to make you feel as though you were really there. As a reader, I truly fell for Prentice's sort-of dopey bad luck. He was a wonderful and endearing choice for a main character, and he was defined incredibly well.

I have only two (very slight) criticisms of this novel. First, I found the ending to be rather anti-climactic. Perhaps the romantic side of me was hoping it would end differently; I felt that it was kind-of ho-hum. Second, I found the book difficult to follow at times. Certain passages were described very cryptically, and once or twice I had to give up in trying to figure out what was being explained. For the first half of the book, the chronology jumped around quite a lot, and I feel that Banks managed this more adeptly at some times than at others.

All in all, I was quite pleased by this novel. It was definitely one which was tough to put down (which could explain why I'm so sleepy lately!) and I'm sorry to see it end.

I'm afraid I can't join in the profusion of plaudits of The Crow Road as a literary work, but nor can I dismiss it as being "boring" or "too long" as other readers have. Yes, the book is indeed witty, and I truly don't understand the problems with "Scottish dialect" that other reviewers seem gratuitously to throw into their reviews. One thing that actually kept puzzling me was that there truly wasn't much Scottish dialect or too much British dialect for that matter to speak of herein. The idiom of much of the writing is, in fact, American - perhaps having to do with the fact that Banks spent several years in America before penning this book.

So, what am I to say here? First off, a great many people die unexpectedly, or not so unexpectedly, depending on how one interprets things - Banks leaves this question, delightfully, open-ended. But if you don't fancy pondering your eventual demise, this book is not for you. But what really kept me going was my gradual identification with Prentice Mchoan and his eventual love interest, "Ash" or Ashley. I started to realise, and it began growing on me, that Prentice was coming of age at the same time that I did, springing from the same upper-middle class background, listening to the same music (Morrissey, anyone?), drinking about as much (quite a lot!), and having the same sort of friendships and relations with women that I did, the only difference was that he was Scottish, whilst I was English. It dawned upon me somewhere near the end that this book was a sort of historical artifact of a sensitive, intellectual young man coming of age in Britain at the same time as I (though I didn't have quite so many funerals to attend). For this rather personal reason, the book was significant for me: The late night pub crawls, the hangovers, the drunken (and frequently stoned) commiseration with friends on rooftops, graveyards and other odd places. Above all, the sisterly friends who, ever so gradually, become love interests struck a deep chord. All these interludes were so spot-on to me that when the first Gulf War became obvious as the historical backdrop, I felt so strongly that I was reading about an era in my life and in history nearly two decades past that it was terribly striking. I don't know if the youth of today with their ubiquitous mobiles and text messaging are, in the end, very much different from the youth in the 80's and early 90's in Britain. But cultural differences are bound to exist between different eras. This was my culture, my era. It was interesting. It was awkward. It was weird. We were young!

As for the rest of the "mystery" in the plot and what not, it didn't engage me so much, perhaps for the very reason that the rest of it did. As Prentice's Dad tells him:

"The thing is that because the real stories just happen, they don't always tell you very much. Sometimes they do, but usually they're too...messy." (The ellipsis is Banks'.)

This novel is such a story.

I was excited when this popped up as a Vine choice, as I'd just finished rereading Banks' classic gruesome tale, "The Wasp Factory." I'd never read anything else by him, though I knew he published both as a "regular" novelist and a science-fiction writer.

"The Crow Road" starts off a bit slow, and somewhat confusingly goes back and forth between the life of its young protagonist Prentice in recent times (feels like the late 80s / early 90s) and the lives of his father and his siblings a generation earlier. The pacing's odd. Prentice's family is odd. And Prentice himself has his moments. For much of the book, it reads a bit like a coming-of-age novel - something like an update of Martin Amis' "The Rachel Papers." Once you're a few dozen pages into the book, it becomes an immensely pleasurable book; at times thought-provoking and strange, at times laugh-out- loud funny,as any good Bildungsroman should be.

But . . . there's a twist. I don't want to give it away, and I'd advise you not to read the back cover (which, in proof form, provides too much detail), but it's a bit unexpected and ties the whole thing together nicely.

Some of the book seems "obvious." There are slight plot resolutions and character interactions which come across as a bit ordinary. That said, Banks avoids being trite because he's something of a "journey" writer - that is, getting there is at least as much fun as the ending itself. He's aided in this with convincing dialogue and enough extra detail (humor, sub-plots and the like) to make it feel that the novel's not pre-guided to the "logical" conclusion. "The Wasp Factory," a much loonier and unconventional book, did much the same thing. Structurally, both books are superb. I've obviously got to check out some more!

Both of the Banks novels I've read take place in a Scotland that's convincing without resorting to stereotype. As an American who's spent about three days in Scotland, I can't tell you if he's considered a regional author or not, but the backdrop to the story is refreshingly different, and it doesn't feel accidental - Banks' portrayal of London seems spot-on as well.

I'm happy to recommend this lively and lengthy book and look forward to rereading it in a year or so.

While reading this, I kept thinking this is really a coming of age story and then I went back to read its synopsis and that's exactly what it said. It's a good read if you are a fan of books like this, where one thinks back and examines the threads in the family and how beliefs got you where you are today - familial roles, friendships, etc. I didn't always understand what the author was saying with some of the slang used- my ignorance, I confess. I like the way he uses the accents though so you can hear how a character is speaking, even though I wasn't always certain what was being conveyed. I liked it but I thought there was sometimes too much detail in the thoughts and conversations that might belabor a point too much, which can ultimately detract from the plot. It probably won't seem that way to the people who relate to the characters though. I believe this is a book a lot of guys will relate to or one in which people who have similar friends and familial relationships as these characters will get into.