The Crow Road by Iain Banks

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The Crow Road

Iain Banks

The Crow Road Iain Banks 'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.'

Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Full of questions about the McHoan past, present and future, he is also deeply preoccupied: mainly with death, sex, drink, God and illegal substances...

The Crow Road Details

Date : Published 1993 by Abacus (first published 1992) ISBN : 9780349103235 Author : Iain Banks Format : Paperback 501 pages Genre : Fiction, Contemporary, Mystery, Cultural, Scotland

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Maciek says

It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.

The Crow Road is the first novel by Iain Banks that I've read, and it has one of the best and irresistible opening hooks ever - it quite literally begins with a bang (get it?). What other novel begins with the main character's dead grandmother exploding?

Iain Banks is a Scottish writer who is probably more known in the US for his science fiction, which he publishes as Iain M. Banks (using his adopted middle name, Menzies). The Crow Road is one of the mainstream novels he publishes as Iain Banks, and one of his most beloved works. The title is delivered from a (supposedly) old Scottish saying referring to death - if you're "away the crow road" you're not going to be coming back.

The novel's protagonist is Prentice McHoan, who returns from Glasgow to attend his grandmother's funeral held in his (fictional) hometown of Gallanah in Argyll and Bute, on the picturesque west coast of Scotland. This is not the first loss in the family: eight years ago Prentice's favorite uncle, Rory - a bohemian travel writer, motorcyclist and author of a memoir chronicling his travels through India - has left his home, taken his motorcycle and vanished without a trace. When Prentice meets with his aunt Janice, Rory's partner at the time of his disappearance, he comes into posession of some of Rory's papers and computer diskettes. He discovers that at the time of his disappearance Rory was working at a new project, titled - you guessed - The Crow Road. Prentice thinks that in these documents lies the clue to solve his uncle's disappearance and decides to analyze them, not knowing that he might find out more about his family than he hoped for. The novel resonated well with readers upon its publication in 1992, and in 1996 BBC produced and adaptation for the small screen, which was also very succesful.

With this novel Iain Banks has proven himself to be a great storyteller who can handle a large cast of interesting, quirky characters - each of which is distinctive and unique personal traits. Banks creates a family which feels real, not scriped, and it's a delight to see his characters interact with one another. Prentice is a student who is struggling to survive and find himself in the world, and is compelled to believe in some sort of a higher power. Prentice cannot accept the fact that people simply cease to exist when they die; he thinks that their consciousness somehow continues on. This provokes a strain in relations with his father, Kenneth, a writer of books for children and a comitted nonbeliever, who denies the possibility of an afterlife and any universal purpose. Luckily, there's Ashley, his childhood friend, and her uncle Lachlan. Prentice's other uncle Fergus owns the local glassware factory and is an important figure in the town as the business made him very wealthy, and he lives in a grand castle. Because of his travels and exotic experiences Uncle Rory has already been an enigmatic figure, and his mysterious disapparance only adds more fuel to the Prentice's eagerness to find out what happened to him. The McHoan family interacts with the Watts and Urvills, and each family has a different financial and social background, each as different as real people are from one another.

Banks tells his story mostly through Prentice's eyes, employing him as the first person narrator - and does an admirable job at creating a character who is sympathetic but also at times unlikable, who behaves like a jerk and is often not aware of things around him, but with whom we cannot help but sympathize, because we can remember full well how confused we were at one point in our lives or another. Parts of novel are set in another timeline and told in the third person, letting the reader see the past of Prentice's family and its

PDF File: The Crow Road... 3 Read and Download Ebook The Crow Road... members present themselves, instead of being interpreted by someone else. What could easily have ended up as a mess works perfectly and gives the reader a more intimate insight into the storyline and the formation of its characters - in particular his father Kenneth, whose stories about Scottish myths and legends capture the attention and minds of children. Even though the sections are chronologially out of sequence they compliment one another, never feeling artificial, showing how times past haunt the times present.

The Scottish setting is used to full extent here - Banks has a real sense of the place he's writing about. His Scotland is a place full of beauty and myth, even employing the obligatory imagery of castles, mountains and lochs without sounding tired and cliche, effortlessly presening the experience of growing up as a young lad in Scotland as unique and magical. He certainly romanticizes it a bit, but does so without the descent to posh sentimentality - he obviously remembers his own growing up in Dunfermline very well. Characters even use a fair amount of Scottish dialect, none of which feels forced - it contributes to their personalities and lets the dialogue flow smoothly, without sounding false. There's also a fair amount of humor in this book, sometimes grim - but also outrageously funny, such as Prentice's exploding grandmother (who herself was quite a character). Although the novel is full of death, it manages to walk the crow road with laughter, never truly losing its high spirit.

The Crow Road is a a long novel, not easily classified - it is both a coming of age piece and also a sprawling family drama, concerned with several generations of several Scottish families. This works perfectly fine until the last quarter, where it changes gears and focuses on becoming a mystery. This is the section which I felt made it lose its dreamlike quality by interrupting the meditative ruminations on life and death, which I so enjoyed, and turning into a cat and mouse procedural. While I thought that the ending was ultimately satisfying, I thought that the last section prevented the novel from completely coming together and disturbed its delicate balance which was done so well.

So, is The Crow Road worth reading? Certainly. I can now see why it is considered one of the author's best novels; Iain Banks is a good storyteller who writes well, and despite my gripes with the concluding part (which made me take down one star from the rating) I enjoyed spending time with his characters and was captivated by his story. It's absorbing, full of eccentic characters and situations which are both interesting and charming. It is full of humor resulting from these characters and events, and despite its grim themes its also ultimately uplifting and hopeful. It's world is full of small details which enrich it, and made reading its 500 pages no work at all. It contains moments of beauty which will resonate with all readers:

These were the days of fond promise, when the world was very small and there was still magic in it. He told them stories of the Secret Mountain and the Sound that could be Seen, of the Forest drowned by Sand and the trees that were time-stilled waters; he told them about the Slow Children and the Magic Duvet and the Well-Travelled Country, and they believed all of it. They learned of distant times and long-ago places, of who they were and what they weren’t, and of what had and what had never been. Then, every day was a week, each month a year. A season was a decade, and every year a life.

Angela says

There are many ways to write a merely good novel, but I've read few great ones--novels with truly compelling plots--that don't make their emotional impact by pummeling their main characters until their lives just can't seem to get any worse, and then somehow finding that bit left to destroy. The Crow Road does this masterfully. Halfway through the book, main character Prentice has watched his romantic interests thwarted by those who are supposed to be closest to him, painfully embarrassed himself in front of his entire family, is trapped by his own stubbornness into a painful falling out with his father, has just lost his the last writings of his long-missing uncle Rory, is broke, and is failing school. These are all his own doing and thoroughly his

PDF File: The Crow Road... 4 Read and Download Ebook The Crow Road... own fault, and the reader can't help but cringe as he begins to realize it. Then he's struck with an even deeper blow, and eventually sets out to discover what exactly happened to his uncle.

Here what was the tale of three intertwined families becomes more of a mystery novel, but at the same time it's a moving story about family ties, a great coming of age story, and no small part romantic subplot. All of these are woven together brilliantly, to create a wonderful, suspenseful tale with an interesting Scottish flavor to it. This is the first Iain Banks I've read, and I'll definitely keep an eye out for more.

Kevin says

The Crow Road struck a major nostalgic chord within myself; the books main narrator and protagonist, Prentice McHoan, is roughly my age and brings to life his youth during the 1980's and early 1990's, and as as well as narrating his tale, he evokes the history, the culture and politics of those years. As well as The Crow Road being essentially a murder/mystery, a different take on crime fiction in many ways, it contains the trial and tribulations of three generations of two related Scottish Families, whom live on the Western Coast of Scotland, containing a snapshot of society from the 1940s to the (then) present (being 1991). It deals with popular issues such as religion, the first Gulf War, and left wing and right wing debates within the two families.

It is a good novel, published in 1992 and was later adapted as a Television Drama in 1996. Iain Banks can really empathetically describe both generational differences, the epoch he bases his book in, cultural norms and the most vivid description of the Western Coast of Scotland in all its beauty. This also is a very mainstream and an ambitious work from Iain Banks compared (obviously) to anything from his Culture series, and apart from the underlying plot motive of family secrets and murder, is on its surface level, almost an auto-biographical portrayal of two related, close families. I find it hard to pin down just exactly what genre Banks contemporary books could be labelled into. Yes, its a murder/mystery, but also a lot more. A good read.

Emilia Barnes says

It's kind of hard to describe this novel, and to give it a review: so much happens, and so little is definable by the traditional standards by which we measure books. I mean, was it enjoyable? Yes. Was it well written? Yes. Was it un-put-down-able? For me, especially by the end, yes. But while all this is true, it isn't why I liked it. Or not the only reason. Behind the funny antics of three interesting families in Scotland, lies a mystery. But tying it all together is a very thought-provoking, deeply-felt and beautifully developed Bildungsroman.

I haven't seen the BBC adaptation yet, but I got it on DVD even as I was finishing this. I would thoroughly recommend this to everyone, with a small warning that there is some (though not much and not indeciphrable) Scottish dialect in there, and that there's some time jumping, which can at first be confusing, but which all comes together neatly by the end.

Ignacio says

A mitad de camino de la novela de maduración y el drama familiar, The Crow Road es magnífica mientras

PDF File: The Crow Road... 5 Read and Download Ebook The Crow Road... mantiene el equilibrio entre esos dos aspectos. Dos tercios de su extensión en los cuales se alternan capítulos en primera persona donde su protagonista, Prentice, relata su enfrentamiento con su padre, el vacío dejado hace unos años por la desaparición de su tío, su enamoramiento de una prima... y otros en los que un narrador omnisciente desarrolla el pasado familiar, en especial la relación entre su padre y su tío. El contraste entre ambos planos se acentúa en virtud al desarrollo de cada uno. Frente al estilo pulcro y objetivo de estos últimos fragmentos, los relatados por Prentice cuentan con una voz emotiva que el autor de La fábrica de avispas aprovecha para dar rienda suelta a su reconocida habilidad en el uso del lenguaje. Continuos juegos de palabras, ingeniosas construcciones gramaticales, abundante jerga, diferentes registros de lenguaje según el interlocutor... Un auténtico dolor de cabeza en una posible traducción.

Prentice se antoja un mamón de campeonato a falta de veinte veranos, pero su forma de ser y cómo se explica a sí mismo es otra de las cualidades de The Crow Road. Cómo a través suyo se confrontan dos generaciones, la segunda de las cuales, sobreprotegida, y cómo ambas encaran los cambios de la vida y, sobre todo, la muerte. Una muerte omnipresente a lo largo de toda la historia a modo de gran hilo conductor.

Donde la novela termina descarrilando un poco es cuando se alcanza el momento en que Prentice se convierte en su único narrador. Una pequeña componente de género, el misterio sobre la desaparición de su tío, pasa a un primerísimo plano y domina el sutil equilibrio mantenido por Banks. Este cambio de peso en la composición afecta también a las cualidades de Prentice al contar su historia. Pierde su inventiva y, hasta cierto punto, su frescura y The Crow Road se convierte en algo mucho más convencional y a mi modo de ver menos interesante. Pero que es lo que ocurre cuando maduras.

Jackie says

There are two parts in this book which I really found beautifully written. The first is on page 25,

“These were the days of fond promise, when the world was very small and there was still magic in it. …… Then, every day was a week, each month a year. A season was a decade, and every year a life.”

The second was the incredible discussion on the meaning of life and death on page 484.

“Was Fergus Urvill anywhere still? Apart from the body – whatever was left of him physically, down there in that dark, cold pressure – was there anything else: Was his personality intact somehow, somewhere?”

“I found that I couldn’t believe that it was. Neither was dad’s, neither was Rory’s, nor Aunt Fiona’s, nor Darren Watt’s. There was no such continuation; it just didn’t work that way, and there should even be a sort of relief in the comprehension that it didn’t. We continue in our children, and in our works and in the memories of others; we continue in our dust and ash. To want more was not just childish, but cowardly, and somehow constipatory, too. Death was change; it led to new chances, new vacancies, new niches and opportunities; it was not all loss.”

And this well thought out discussion continued into the next paragraph.

But I did not enjoy reading 501 pages to find these two small gems. And I did grow very tired of reading about the unending serial of hangovers and drunken sexual exploits. The protagonist was rather uninteresting and shallow as was his family. It’s hard to believe that this author is as successful as he apparently is. For sure, I will not engage in reading any more of these unending, uneventful plots.

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Gary says

The story is told mainly by Prentice McHoan who having returned to Scotland is reunited with his very different and complex family. Prentice tells tales of the family past, present and future all the time being preoccupied with: mainly death, sex, drink, God and illegal substances. This is an entertaining read and full of humorous stories. I would like to thank Net Galley and Little, Brown Book Group UK for supplying a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Megan Baxter says

I was enjoying the hell out of this book right up until, near the end, it decided without warning to become a murder mystery. That section felt so out of place with the rest of this meandering, detailed meditation on death and growing up.

Note: The rest of this review has been withdrawn due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You can read why I came to this decision here.

In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook

Paromjit says

This is a re-read for me, I first read this a long time ago but I loved returning to it. I admit to hugely adoring the author and his wide body of work, including the sci-fi. Iain Banks has a imaginative and distinctive storytelling approach, offbeat characters and unusual, curious scenarios that cannot fail to capture a reader's interest. The icing on the cake is the wit and humour pervading this novel of loss and death. There is a strong sense of the Scottish location in the tale of Prentice McHoan, a larger than life character. We learn of his growing up years, the sex, the girls and the history of his family. Prentice becomes intrigued with the disappearance of his Uncle Rory at the time he was working on The Crow Road. Banks looks at memory, the broad issues of all it is to be human, family and the circle of life and death itself. This is dark book which was a thrilling re-read, it seemed even better second time round. Cannot recommend this highly enough! Love it. Many thanks to Little, Brown for a 25th Anniversary ARC.

Charlotte says

If I could choose no stars I would have. I really cannot stand books that have characters I don't care about. No one in this mess of family / extended family / friends of family was remotely memorable. I could care less about their issues as well. I read this book because it's on the 1001 books list and I have never read anything by Iain Banks before - and I wasn't missing anything. The reviews for this book were great - so I was very disappointed in it's lack of eh - everything! Brilliant - not a chance. Nor was it funny, 'exhilarating' or phenomenal. It seems like when the story is seriously lulling Banks just throws in oh and we did drugs and oh someone else dies. The one thing I did like was laughing about how it semi-tries to be a murder mystery?

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What was that about? If this is novel is a representation of modern British literature I don't want anything to do with it.

Brad says

The Crow Road is not Iain Banks best book, but I understand why it is his most popular (even though I am sure it's the wrong Banks book on that list of 1001 books to read).

• It has the most catchy of openings: "It was the day my grandmother exploded." It's an opening that appears regularly in lists of "best opening lines" and rightly so; it's intriguing, messy and one of the best hooks I can remember reading.

• Apart from some characters in a couple of his lesser known "mainstream" novels, the McHoans, Urvills and Watts of The Crow Road -- even with their eccentricities and foibles -- are Banks' most likable characters.

• The Crow Road's plot is Banks' most accessible for mainstream audiences. It is a mix of the jilted lover tale (where the protagonist loses the love of his life to someone close to him, never having noticed that the woman he should be loving has been his best friend, standing right beside him as long as he can remember), the quiet murder mystery, and the generational family soap opera with a Scottish castle and Observatory thrown into the mix. It's the sort of comforting storyline that everyone's Mum can love (well... my Mum, at least).

• It's compellingly paced too. The build is languid with just enough information and forward momentum to keep its audience on board until the "can't-put-it-down" portion of the book kicks in around page 350. It's the perfect book for sitting on a comfy chair, in the sun, over a long weekend on Loch Lomand.

And for some of those reasons, I, too, enjoyed The Crow Road, but not without mitigation.

My main problem was that I didn't like the narrator, Prentice, until very late in the novel. In fact, Prentice may be the least likable protagonist I've encountered in Banks' body of work (and that includes Frank Cauldhame from The Wasp Factory). He whined, he moaned, he was petty, he was precious and his sense of entitlement drove me crazy. But, of course, that was the point. Banks wanted him to piss us off so that his growth would ring true. And it does. It's just that reading a first person narrative from the perspective of such a pain in the ass borders on the tiring. Which, to Banks' credit, he recognized and handled well with interjections of third person narrative focused on the elder generation, thus giving us respite from the little jerk until Prentice developed into a genuinely likable guy.

Paradoxically, though, The Crow Road also includes my favourite supporting character in all of Banks' books, Prentice's father, Kenneth McHoan. I know most people love Rory and his globe trotting bohemianism, but Kenneth is a cooler guy and a great Dad. From his River Game (a home made, violence free game of trade economics) politics and love for his son, to his children's stories, atheism and wonderfully fitting death, Kenneth was the part of The Crow Road I longed to read. When he wasn't there I was thinking about him, and when he was there I never wanted his part to end. Plus, I kinda wish he'd been my Dad.

So what do I really think about The Crow Road? Well...I like it. It's a good read, an accessible read, and it has some moments of absolute beauty (like the post-coital Morse code, the way Ken handles the creation of the Black River Game, and the ending is one of Banks' most emotionally satisfying). But it's not one of Iain Banks' best books. The trouble for Banks is that his best books -- the dark and sinister or the challenging or the ferociously creative -- are books that most people don't want to read and many who do read them just

PDF File: The Crow Road... 8 Read and Download Ebook The Crow Road... don't connect with them.

I do connect, however. Banks is my glass of scotch, and I'm always willing to imbibe. He's officially one of my faves. Give him a try. You may just develop a crush, right Kelly?

David says

Damn, this book was terrific! I don't know why I didn't stumble across it earlier, given it was published in 1992 and was adapted by the BBC as a miniseries in 1996 (oh wait .... the 90's were the years that got eaten by my "professional career"... the mindless TV years). Anyway, no matter.

"It was the day my grandmother exploded." Any author with the balls to have that as an opening sentence deserves to be given a chance, at least. Banks keeps up the brilliance for another 500 pages, drawing you in to the story of three Scottish families with a complicated, interlocked history. Young Prentice McHoan is a pretty irresistible first person narrator, so that it's a pleasure to accompany him as he navigates his last year at college, trying to come to terms with his various preoccupations: death, drink, sex, God, illegal substances, and whatever happened to Uncle Rory (who disappeared a decade earlier).

It takes four funerals, a wedding, and immeasurable amounts of whisky, but in between hangovers Prentice is pretty smart, and pieces it all together for an ending that is maybe a little too neat, but is definitely satisfying.

Two minor aspects of Banks's style could be a little offputting to some readers, but it's well worth the effort to keep reading. There's a fair amount of Scottish dialect, mainly dialog, though it's reasonably easy to figure out. Also, Banks alternates between Prentice's first-person narrative and an 'omniscient third-person' narrator, with frequent switches of timeframe across the generations. This is confusing for about the first 100 pages, until you get all the main characters straight in your head, after which it ceases to be an issue.

Great story with complex, believable characters, brilliantly written. What's not to love?

Algernon says

It's so easy to choose this famous opening line for starting a review of Crow Road, and therein lies the danger of focusing only on the sarcasm, the tongue-in-cheek, flippant running commentary provided by Prentice McHoan on the history of his family and on his own growing up process, as angsty and self- conscious and annoying as only smartypants teenagers can be. But there's more going on under the provocative surface, and for me the last line of the quote is the key to the novel: Prentice is obsessed with death, not without reason, seeing as he looses a lot more of his relatives and friends before the end of the novel - can't say who exactly, spoilers and all that ... The quest to define his place in the real world and to come to terms with loss will overshadow the more conventional storyline of Prentice chasing girls and learning about sex. Frankly, I believe this romantic angle could have been handled better : not only could I guess the outcome right from the start, but the final revelations made me laugh at the silly instead of touching my tender bones (view spoiler). Prentice did have a nice turn of phrase when he describes the girl

PDF File: The Crow Road... 9 Read and Download Ebook The Crow Road... he loves : the stunning, the fabulous, the golden-haired, vellus faced, diamond-eyed Verity, upwardly mobile scionette of the house of Urvill, the jewel beside the jowls; the girl who, for me, had put the lectual in intellectual, and phany in epiphany and the ibid in libidinous!

Having read Stonemouth about a year before this, I was struck by how similar Stewart and Prentice are in the role of self-absorbed and slightly unreliable narrators of their own stories. Both behave outrageously towards their families and to the girls they love, both drink heavily and experiment with drugs, both have strong family ties calling them back home - East Coast in the latter published book, West Coast in the earlier version. Stonemouth benefits from a tighter, more focused plot and a more credible romantic relationship, as well as what I considered a more balanced, more elegant prose. Crow Road has its own strengths, and surprisingly they come from one thing that initially annoyed me : the fractured timeline and the random jumps in point of view to other members of the McHoan clan, and their tightly knitted relatives in the Urvill and Watt families. The larger perspective showcases a more diverse thematic beyond the teenager angst, looking at mature love, growing old, raising kids, being an artist, politics, economics, and so on.

Childhood memories, primarily of Prentice and his brothers, but with sidetrips looking at the older generation, play an important part in the process of understanding oneself, both by identifying the deep roots and the connection to the land of his birth, and by stressing the cyclical nature of the events, repeated with variations from one generation to another. Three brothers - Kenneth, Hamish, Rory - pass the ball to the younger team: Lewis, Prentice, James. I was envious of Prentice: of the wild liberty he had to explore the Gallanach county, with its ruined castles, windy ocean shores, clear lochs and high moors; of his friends Darren, Ashley, Diana, Helen; most of all of his storytelling father who was so good at inventing modern fairytales for the kids:

These were the days of fond promise, when the world was very small and there was still magic in it. He told them stories of the Secret Mountain and the Sound that could be Seen, of the Forest drowned by Sand and the trees that were time-stilled waters; he told them about the Slow Children and the Magic Duvet and the Well-Travelled Country, and they believed all of it. They learned of distant times and long-ago places, of who they were and what they weren't, and of what had and what had never been. Then every day was a week, each month a year. A season was a decade and every year a life.

The older Prentice was a bit too morbid and clueless about girls for my taste, but this comes possibly from some uncomfortable memories of not acting much better when I was his age. One of the central metaphors in the book is an old folk expression that explains the title of the book, as "going the crow road" means somebody has died. There's also a defining moment when Prentice looks out a train window at a suburban grass field : "an image of desolation I had fastened onto, in my self-pity, like a blood-starved leech onto bruised flesh." , a place he will revisit at a later date to experience an epiphany on how adversity makes us stronger, provided it doesn't kill us first in the process. Prentice is not totally locked inside his own head, the novel has a lot of funny moments and poignant commentary on the issues of the day. He refers to the first Iraq War as a war scripted by Heller from a story by Orvell, and somebody would be bombing their own airfield before too long, no doubt . We get some nostalgic glimpse of early computing in 1990, with buggy floppy discs and obscure text editors that are incompatible with one another. We get some great Star Wars trivia from a boy obsessed with mind controlling / Jedi forcing the adults to go his own way. We get a great list of soundtrack options like The Pixies, Morrissey, REM, Faith No More, Deacon Blue with 'Born in a Storm', to which I would add my own favorites like The Pogues, The Beautful South, Belle and Sebastian. We get a great quote from Kenneth on being always skeptical of authority figures:

People can be teachers and idiots; they can be philosophers and idiots; they can be politicians and idiots ... in fact I think they have to be ... a genius can be an idiot. The world is largely run for and by idiots; it is no great handicap in life and in certain areas is actually a distinct advantage and even a prerequisite for advancement.

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The West Coast of Scotland really comes alive in the novel. I put a couple of places on my bucket list, like the Hebrides hailed as the place people go to escape from the holiday industry, or that bit north of Tighnabruaich, where you can look out over the Kyles of Bute? That's a nice bit of scenery. . The language may be offputting in its dialect expressions ( Dinnae greet, laddy! stands for 'don't cry, young man'), but this is not the first Scot novel I've read, and I had no trouble following the script. Let's see, what else? The drinking of course! I have only recently started drinking single matls from Scotland myself, and the novel provided a lot of entertainment in this particular passion, given that all the characters, regardless of age, sex and political colour imbibe of the stuff with reckless abandon. The best scene for me describes the Hogmanay tradition, that is kind of like trick or treating with alcohol instead of candy, on the pretext of visiting friends and relatives on New Year.

The novel is one of those that don't flow quite as smoothly as I would like (I already mentioned the romance angle, and I would add a crime investigation that felt forced and contrived), but also one that grows on you after finishing and make good material for a re-read at leisure. I was aiming for a four star rating, but looking at all the quotes and ideas I bookmarked for future reference, I realize how much I got out of the story in the end. I will close with a fragment of modern verse from the pen of Uncle Rory, because it brilliantly resumes the novel and I feel we could all do with a bit of poetry after all that heavy prose:

All your nonsense and truths, your finery and squalid options, combine and coalesce, to one noise including laugh and whimper, scream and sigh, forever and forever repeating, in any tongue we care to choose, whatever lessened, separated message we want to hear.

It all boils down to nothing, and where we have the means and will to fix our reference within that flux; there we are.

If it has any final signal, The universe says simply, but with every possible complication, "Existence", and it neither pressures us, nor draws us out, except as we allow.

Let me be part of that outrageous chaos ... And I am.

Sassy Brit says

The 25th Anniversary edition of The Crow Road provides an insight to Iain Banks earlier writing. I have to admit to not reading this previously, and I found it to be an interesting coming of age story of life, death, sex, drugs and everything in between.

It flicks backwards and forwards in time and has its quite bizarre moments, yet from the first line - It was the

PDF File: The Crow Road... 11 Read and Download Ebook The Crow Road... day my grandmother exploded - I realised this book was going to be different, an alternative read, one might say. What really happened in The Crow Road, when uncle Rory disappeared?

I honestly do not know why I had not picked this one up before! Admittedly this is a strange story surrounding the family and drama of Prentice McHoan; a complex family with much to share. It will have you feeling a wide mixture of feelings from laugh out loud moments to ewwww! I think I'm going to puke! How many books do you think can do that, these days? It is bleak and depressing at times, just like the Scottish Highlands in winter... but even so, both have captivating and distinctive views like no other.

Louise Wilson says

This is the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Crow Road.

It was the day my Grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B minor and reflected that it was always death that brought me back to Gallanach.

The Crow Road is the first book I have read by the author, Iain Banks. The story is told mostly by the protagonist Prentice McHoan. I could not make my mind up if this book was a family drama or a murder mystery. The characters are interesting, especially Kenneth. This is a mixture of sibling rivalry, politics and religious beliefs. The pace is fast. There are a lot of characters but they all have have a part to play.

I would like to thank NetGalley, Little Brown Book Group. UK and the author Iain Banks for my ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Bill says

Iain Banks. Every time I go through the process of selecting the next book to read, and one of his comes up, I wonder, hmmm...should I now? Or should I put this off until I'm ready; for a special time perhaps.

The thing is, Iain Banks is a very special writer. You need to be ready for him because his stories require a lot of focus and patience. This is what makes him great. Almost always, there is a payoff that makes all the wondering of where he's is going worthwhile. Take Walking on Glass, for example. The way he brought everything together was brilliant.

The Crow Road is probably one of his most accessible novels. It centers around Prentice McHoan and his family in a Scottish village. The story moves along with alternating viewpoints as well as moving back and forth from flashbacks to present day. Using this method, Banks slowly peels back layers of the story, and as a reader, I love sitting back and letting it all unfold.

The end result was okay, but nothing overly devastating or shocking, which was a disappointment for me. But Banks is such a pleasure to read, and building a storyline through these layers reminds me how much fun reading can be, regardless of the end result.

So, upon finishing it, I was set on giving The Crow Road three stars. But after thinking about how I felt while reading this, it's a no-brainer to bump this novel to a very solid four.

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Angus McKeogh says

So this book was recommended to me more than a decade ago along with The Wasp Factory. I initially read The Wasp Factory right out of the gate and found it less than impressive. So I put this one off. I dove into it a few years back and couldn’t get past 100 pages. This time I was determined to finish it. I restarted and plodded on. And I realize I’m in the minority in the ratings for this book, but I continued on, trying to capture the hubbub I’d heard about this book. But all I got from it was boredom. Eventless. I frequently lost the plot because there wasn’t one. There was a load of hubbub about the opening sentence of this book and unfortunately that was likely the best sentence in the book. More boredom. More non-events. At 501 pages I’d say there were perhaps 14 pages that were interesting. Wow. Maybe I’m done with Banks. Apparently his stuff just doesn’t appeal to me. Just bad. Uh...this review is getting to be like the book. Rambling. Lacking conclusions. No plot. Boring characters. Uh...

Roseb612 says

Bez okolk? musím p?iznat, že tahle kniha m? dostala. Má skoro 600 stran, ale m?la jsem ji p?e?tenou za dva a p?l dne, protože se to ?te úpln? samo. Banks?v styl m? dokonale sedl, ta neustálá mírná ironie a nadsázka, prolínání n?kolika ?asových rovin, p?dorys rodinné ságy postavený na lince otec (Kenneth) a syn (Prentice), mezi které se d?lí vypráv?ní - to všechno byl prost? m?j šálek ?aje. Linie s pátráním po zmizelém strý?ku Rorym se dlouho jevila pouze jako vedlejší kolej, ale nakonec práv? tohle se stalo katalyzátorem celého d?je. Paradoxn? Roryho nestály život všechny ty jeho r?zné vylomeniny a dobrodružné cesty, ale román, který se rozhodl napsat a který vystav?l na p?dorysu rodinné historie (protože ho prost? nic lepšího nenapadalo). Ta spousta bizarních situací, které si dokáže Banks vymyslet, nebere konc? - od úvodní exploze babi?ky, p?es Kennethovu smrt úderem blesku na st?eše kostela a kon?e t?eba Fergusovým posledním leteckým výletem, to všechno dotvá?í skv?lou mozaiku p?íb?hu. Paradoxn? o takovýchto knihách se píše nejh?? - základní d?jovou linii neustále rozbíjí ?ada historek a až z kontextu všech t?chto r?znorodých ?áste?ek vyvstane finální obraz - prost? jako v život?. Takže pro m? byl tohle ur?it? velký zážitek a po?ítám, že se k Banksovi zase brzo vrátím.

Kontext: Byl státní svátek (Den práce), takže trochu víc ?asu na ?tení - proto to šlo tak rychle. A jinak op?t další kniha z 1001, která stála za to.

První v?ta: "Byl to ten den, kdy mi vybouchla babi?ka." (Mimochodem, z?ejm? jedna z nejlepších otvíracích v?t, co znám).

Poslední v?ta: "Pomyslel jsem na Ashley na opa?ném b?ehu oceánu a ?íkal si, copak asi práv? te? d?lá, a doufal jsem, že se jí da?í a že se má fajn a že na m? t?eba taky myslí, a pak už jsem jenom tak stál s bláznivým úsm?vem na tvá?i, zhluboka jsem se nadechl toho ?erstvého, kou?em provon?ného vzduchu, rozp?áhl ruce k obloze a ?ekl "Pane jo!" "

Jessica says

I can't say enough good things about Iain Banks's The Crow Road. My only question is, why didn't I hear of him and read his work sooner? He's brilliant. It's like Graham Swift and Irvine Welsh met to write a novel,

PDF File: The Crow Road... 13 Read and Download Ebook The Crow Road... and Swift's insight tempered Welsh's mania, but Welsh's hipness updated Swift's subject matter. The result is a brilliant novel - grim, gritty, but funny and somehow uplifting without being cheesy.

It shouldn't make me feel good to read it - it should be depressing as hell, self-defeating, sick on its own self- indulgence. But instead there's something brilliantly down-to-earth and... within reach about it. We could all be the protagonist. And it should annoy me that the novel doesn't give any answers, but I think to answer the questions - about religion vs. atheism, about the mysteries in the family - would be to cheapen the power of the story.

The irony of it. And who doesn't feel that way sometimes - the sort of "only in my life, only in my family," shake-your-head and grin-and-bear-it feeling when things get bizarre? This book is fantastic. I want to read everything else Banks has written. I'm amazed.

Mikela says

This book is written in a very non-linear style which made it very difficult to comprehend what was going on at the beginning. Once I understood the rhythm of the narrative what developed was a very well written, interesting story of a family in Scotland. Banks did an excellent job with characterization, not only in defining them but making me really care what happened to them. This is a slower paced book that kept my interest to the end and actually left me wanting more. Highly recommend.

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