The Crow Road

by Iain Banks

'It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmont 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...

Genres: Fiction, Mystery, Scotland, Contemporary, Thriller, Crime, Novels

501 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1992

About the author

This author also published science fiction under the pseudonym Iain M. Banks.

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edinburgh and then Fife.

Banks met his wife Annie in London, before the release of his first book. They married in Hawaii in 1982. However, he announced in early 2007 that, after 25 years together, they had separated. He lived most recently in North Queensferry, a town on the north side of the Firth of Forth near the Forth Bridge and the Forth Road Bridge.

As with his friend Ken MacLeod (another Scottish writer of technical and social science fiction) a strong awareness of left-wing history shows in his writings. The argument that an economy of abundance renders anarchy and adhocracy viable (or even inevitable) attracts many as an interesting potential experiment, were it ever to become testable. He was a signatory to the Declaration of Calton Hill, which calls for Scottish independence.

In late 2004, Banks was a prominent member of a group of British politicians and media figures who campaigned to have Prime Minister Tony Blair impeached following the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In protest he cut up his passport and posted it to 10 Downing Street. In an interview in Socialist Review he claimed he did this after he "abandoned the idea of crashing my Land Rover through the gates of Fife dockyard, after spotting the guys armed with machine guns." He related his concerns about the invasion of Iraq in his book Raw Spirit, and the principal protagonist (Alban McGill) in the novel The Steep Approach to Garbadale confronts another character with arguments in a similar vein.

Interviewed on Mark Lawson's BBC Four series, first broadcast in the UK on 14 November 2006, Banks explained why his novels are published under two different names. His parents wished to name him Iain Menzies Banks but his father made a mistake when registering the birth and he was officially registered as Iain Banks. Despite this he continued to use his unofficial middle name and it was as Iain M. Banks that he submitted The Wasp Factory for publication. However, his editor asked if he would mind dropping the 'M' as it appeared "too fussy". The editor was also concerned about possible confusion with Rosie M. Banks, a minor character in some of P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves novels who is a romantic novelist. After his first three mainstream novels his publishers agreed to publish his first SF novel, Consider Phlebas. To distinguish between the mainstream and SF novels, Banks suggested the return of the 'M', although at one stage he considered John B. Macallan as his SF pseudonym, the name deriving from his favourite whiskies: Johnnie Walker Black Label and The Macallan single malt.

His latest book was a science fiction (SF) novel in the Culture series, called The Hydrogen Sonata, published in 2012.

Author Iain M. Banks revealed in April 2013 that he had late-stage cancer. He died the following June.

The Scottish writer posted a message on his official website saying his next novel The Quarry, due to be published later this year*, would be his last.

* The Quarry was published in June 2013.

Reviews

[Paromjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

2006 review: One of the books that back in the Noughties that everyone was reading - or telling you to read. And looking back to my Noughties reading, this maybe why I read so many books that I low-rated, I was just picking up the flavour of the month, especially from literary types!

A book seen as a darkly witty Scottish coming-of-age novel set in the early '90s just didn't capture my attention, and looks like likely re-read of the future. 6 out of 12. In fact the idea that I classed this as a thriller, back in 2005, does make me ask did I actually read this book properly?

[Megan Baxter · Rating 4 out of 5]

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

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

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?

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was the day my grandmother exploded.

When you start a book with this sentence, you have definitely got the reader hooked - and you will keep her with you throughout, provided you can keep the momentum.

Iain Banks pulls it off smoothly.

This is the tale of the McHoan clan of Gallanch: a gifted, eccentric and somehow cursed Scottish family, told mostly through the eyes of young Prentice McHoan. As the novel begins, we see him going through the angst of a young man at the beginning of the nineties; estranged from his father, jealous of his successful elder brother Lewis, hopelessly in love with his cousin by marriage Verity, and totally lost as to what to do with his life. Even though nobody knows it, the world is on the verge of the First Gulf War, and the tapestry of fragile international relations are about to be torn for ever.

The "explosion" of the grandmother, of course, is just a plot device to pull the reader in. It is explained by the end of the first chapter itself, and there is nothing fantastic about it: but it sets the tone for this brilliantly fractured kaleidoscope of a tale. The eccentric grandma who fell from the tree to her death is only one of the abnormal demises which seems to regularly plague the McHoans. As Prentice says, it seems he returns to the house only for deaths.

Prentice's father Kenneth is a teller of tales for children. He's an atheist, and is not at all happy that his son has taken up the strange religion, based on the Bible, invented by his elder brother Hamish. The extremely thin-skinned Prentice cannot stomach his father's criticism, so he stays away. Prentice's elder brother Lewis is a successful stand-up comedian; his younger brother James is still at school. Apart from the uncle Hamish mentioned earlier and his wife Antonia, Prentice's immediate family has one more male member, his uncle Rory (Kenneth's younger brother) who has been missing for years when the story starts; his Aunt Ilsa who is a globe-trotter; and Aunt Fiona, who has been dead since when Prentice was eleven years old.

Apart from the McHoans, this is also the story of the Urvills; landed gentry, who are related to the McHoans by marriage. Fergus Urvill, the Lord of the Castle, was married to Prentice's Aunt Fiona. They have two beautiful daughters Helen and Diane; the household also consists of Verity Walker, Fergus Urvill's niece, who is the target of Prentice's hopeless infatuation.

The third family which rounds up the dramatis personnae is the Watt family. Lachly Watt, childhood friend of Fergus and Rory; his niece Ashley and nephews Darren and Dean (Darren, too, like so many in this novel, deceased at the beginning from an accident). There is a strong undercurrent of companionship between Ashley and Prentice which could mutate into love - if he lets go of his mooning for Verity.

Up until the midpoint of the book, we are confused whether there is a story at all - it's all just episodes of the (mostly eccentric) doings of the various characters (the novelist holds our interest through his terrific turn of the phrase and his competence in spinning a yarn, though). Suddenly in the middle, Prentice gets hold of a set of papers which are fragments of a novel the absent Rory was purportedly going to publish. Rory already has a name as a travel writer, based on a best-selling book on India he wrote as a young man - but this is something sure to be much more explosive. But unfortunately, tantalising fragments are the only thing Prentice can find.

The novel is provisionally titled Crow Road, an actual address where Rory stayed with his girlfriend - and also a euphemism for death, as popularised by Grandma McHoan ("he went the Crow Road" meant the same as "he kicked the bucket"). So Prentice's journey along the path trodden by his uncle is a symbolic descent into the netherworld. Rory's death has been accepted by all, except Kenneth. As Prentice discovers why, we slowly come to find that all is not as it seems on the surface. Like the wild countryside that surrounds the protagonists, there are secrets and mysteries hidden within the history of the clan too...

***

This is a confusing novel to read, and a very difficult one to review. The structure is purposefully fragmented; the narrative leaps back and forth over time and space. There is a pattern, which reveals itself very slowly, rewarding the reader who stays with the tale.

These were the days of fond promise, when the world was very still and there was 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 who they weren't, and of what had and what had never been.

Thus is Kenneth, the storyteller, introduced - and thus too, the story - of things which had been and had never been. Among the Scottish glens, it seems difficult to separate the two. It is the spirit of this atheist rationalist who loves to tell tall tales which moves this story, too - mixed with that of the wanderer Rory. The chapters alternate between the third-person POVs of Kenneth and Rory and and the first-person POV of Prentice, and the narrative moves in fits and jerks, the timeline starting at the end of the Second World War and ending as the Gulf war is ongoing.

Is there a point to it? Maybe not...

God, what did any of it matter, in the end? You lived; you died. You were as indistinguishable from a distance as one of these blades of grass, and who was to say more important? Growing, surrounded by your kin, you out-living some, some out-living you. You didn't have to adjust the scale much, either, to reduce us to the distant irrelevance of this bedraggled field. The grass was lucky if it grew, was shone upon and rained upon, and was not burned, and was not pulled up by the roots, or poisoned, or buried when the ground was turned over, and some bits just happened to be on a line that humans wanted to walk on, and so got trampled, broken, pressed flat, with no malice; just effect.

Classic nihilism. Yet Prentice does find purpose in being a blade of grass. It is not coincidence that the novel which starts with a funeral ends in a christening.

...and then I just stood there, grinning like a fool, and took a deep, deep breath of that sharp, smoke-scented air and raised my arms to the open sky, and said, 'Ha!'

Enchanting read.

[Algernon (Darth Anyan) · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

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 Morse code WTF . Prentice did have a nice turn of phrase when he describes the girl 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.

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.

[Ian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read four of Ian Banks' “literary” novels back in the 1980s. As a young man I had thought The Wasp Factory was sensational, but I found the three follow-ups just so-so. I did continue with his sci-fi books but not the others. I had long kept this one in mind though, after it was adapted into a TV series in the 1990s. I recalled the series as being quite good, although I could only remember snippets of it.

Maybe my tastes have changed, but I found the novel, well, boring. It starts strongly, with the unusual opening sentence featured in the blurb, but fails to live up to its promise. There were a couple of lol moments early on, the first at the end of Chapter One, the second at the end of Chapter Five, but after that the humour disappeared, or at least I didn’t notice it.

Most of the book is a rambling family saga featuring the protagonist, Prentice McHoan, and his kinfolk, who have a habit of coming to a sticky end. There’s another change of mood for the last hundred pages, but I won’t say more for fear of spoilers. The story is told in non-linear fashion but that wasn’t why I didn’t take to it. Some of my all-time favourite novels are written in that way.

The characters and storyline that Banks created were quite imaginative, I will admit, but somehow the characters failed to engage my emotions. I’ve said in other reviews that I set a lot of store by that. At 500 pages this isn’t a short novel, and for me it didn’t do enough to provide sustained enjoyment.

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want a completely absorbing, wickedly funny Scottish family saga full of often bizarre, complexly-f'ed-up intrigue and sibling rivalry etc, look no further, likesay, ye ken?


‘Did I ever tell you about the time I used to be able to make televisions go wonky, from far away?’

It was a bright and warm day, back in that same summer Rory had come out to the Hebrides with us. Rory and I were walking near Gallanach, going from the marked rocks in one field to the stone circle in another. I remember I had a pain in my side that day and I was worrying that it was appendicitis (one of the boys in my class that year had almost died when his appendix had ruptured). It was just a stitch, though. Uncle Rory was a fast walker and I’d been intent on keeping up with him; my appendix waited another year before it needed taking out.

We had been visiting some of the ancient monuments in the area, and had started talking about what the people who’d built the cairns and stone circles had believed in, and that had led us on to astrology. Then suddenly he mentioned this thing about televisions.

‘Making them go wonky?’ I said. ‘No.’

‘Well,’ Rory said, then turned and looked behind us. We stood up on the verge as a couple of cars passed us. It was hot; I took off my jacket. ‘Well,’ Rory repeated, ‘I was ... a few years older than you are now, I guess. I was over at a friend’s house, and there was a bunch of us watching Top of the Pops or something, and I was humming along with a record. I hit a certain deep note, and the TV screen went wavy. Nobody else said anything, and I wondered if it was just coincidence, so I tried to do it again, and after a bit of adjusting I hit the right note and sure enough, the screen went wavy again. Still nobody said anything.’ Rory laughed at the memory. He was wearing jeans and T-shirt and carried a light jacket over his shoulder.

‘Well, I didn’t want to make a fool of myself, so I didn’t say anything. I thought maybe it just worked on that one particular television set, so I tried it at home; and it still happened. The effect seemed to work from quite a distance, too. When I stood out in the hall and looked into the lounge, it was still there, stronger than ever.

‘Then we were going up to Glasgow, mum and I, and we were passing a shop window full of TVs, and so I tried this new gift for messing up TV screens on them, and hummed away to myself, and all the screens went wild! And I was thinking Great, I really can do magic! The effect is getting stronger! I could appear on TV and do this! Maybe it would make everybody’s screens go weird!’

‘Wow,’ I said, wanting to get home and try this myself.

‘So,’ Rory said. ‘I stopped in my tracks and I asked mum. I said, “Mum; watch this. Watch those screens.” And I hummed for all I was worth, and the pictures on the screens went wavy. And mum just looked at me and said, “What?” And I did it again, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get her to see the effect. Eventually she got fed up with me and told me to stop being silly. I had screens going mental in every TV shop we passed in Glasgow that day, but nobody else seemed to be able to see it.’

Rory grimaced, looking across the edge of the plain beyond Gallanach to the little rocky hill that stuck up from the flat fields.

‘Now, I wish I could remember just what it was that made the penny drop, but I can’t. I mean, usually a beautiful assistant says something stupid and the clever scientist says, “Say that again!” and then comes up with the brilliant plan that’s going to save the world as we know it...but as far as I remember it just came to me.’

‘What?’ I said.

Rory grinned down at me. ‘Vibrations,’ he said.

‘Vibrations?’

‘Yeah. The vibrations I was setting up in my own skull - actually in the eyeball, I suppose - were making my eyes vibrate at about the same frequency as the TV screen flickers. So the screen looked funny, but only to me, that was the point. And it made sense that the further away you were from the screen - as long as you could still make it out, of course - the more pronounced the effect would appear.’ He looked down at me. ‘You see?’

‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘I think so.’ I studied the road for a bit, then looked up, disappointed. ‘So it doesn’t really work after all?’

Rory shook his head. ‘Not the way I thought it did, no,’ he said.

[Paltia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Moving back and forth through time occasionally laying bare the souls of some characters. For me, it was all about Prentice sorting through his personal strategies to life. He likes to think of himself as an individual who stands on principles, shakey though they may sometimes be. If only his concepts of love and jealousy didn’t get in his way. Egotistical and witty, a kind of hero in the making - a spying voyeur hidden in the shadows, sometimes in rare moments slipping into silence. After ingesting just the right amount of substances he will leap in to dance and save others. A young man of many guises in his silk moebius scarf. Experiencing the deaths of several family members he imagines he can quick jump over such obstacles. And, what do we learn of what he learns? How to temper his wild ideas with a hint of common sense, to take emotional risks, to find release in loud moans and howls, and to come to terms with the crow road. As to sharing his feelings for Ashley-“thanks to my own stupidity, my hesitation, my indecision, my negligence-I’d missed it, and that too was gone from me, over.” Or is it? This story wins the day with humor, fresh dialogue, and summary sentences that glow in their beauty. There is a fantastic ending that includes a pelvic floor Morse code message and a completely satisfying final word. Great book!

[Maciek · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 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.

[Gary · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

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 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?

[Louise Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Trish · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was pretty much terrible. I don't care how well-regarded it is. And no, it has nothing to do with unlikable characters or a depressing setting - I've read books with both before and immensely enjoyed them. It also had nothing to do with me having had expected something totally different - it has happened before and I never mind so long as the book I'm reading is good. But this "story" was just ... BORING!

Supposedly, there is this mystery of missing and dead people but I didn't care in the slightest. One flashback was worse than the one before. It all peetered out in the end anyway.

The only thing this story had was lots of sex, alcoholism, other drugs, profanity and more than one character treating others like shit (though the MC definitely was the worst).
I don't actually know if the author's writing style is always like this and if the profanity was to make the dialogues sound "real" or if it was meant to gloss over terrible prose. In any case, I rolled my eyes at it. Don't get me wrong: I swear a lot! So I'm not stuck up and don't want profanity in books. But not in order to make up for bad writing or bad characters.

No redeeming quality whatsoever in this slog. The first sentence is indeed very memorable and funny, but it raised expectations the author simply couldn't meet.

[Charlotte · Rating 1 out of 5]

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

[Sunny · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another surprising 4 star rating. It happens to me every time I read an Iain Banks story. I spend the first three-quarters of the book threatening to abandon the whole affair, and then BAM I'm unable to put it down for the last 150-ish pages.

Also, I need to learn Morse code.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recently found this book again. It deserves a re read. I bought it from one of those book club organised in magazines back then. I remember it was a great book and I read it on nights as a student nurse. I’ll write a proper review when I re read it

[Mikela · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Tom · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

[Paulo (not receiving notifications)]

The Scottish saying, "crow road" is a reference to death. If someone is away to the "Crow Road", it means they are not coming back, they are dead.

"The Crow Road", the book, is a novel about a family saga set in Scotland during the early '90s.
The book starts as a coming-of-age tale that develops into a speculative essay on theology and eventually concludes as a mystery thriller spinning around a series of sordid murders.

The novel opens with the memorable line: It was the day my grandmother exploded.

As I progressed through the book, almost immediately I was hit by the similarities between the trajectory of the main character and my own life, going from an innocent child to a dreaming teenager to become a disillusioned adult, once aware of the harsher aspects of life. Prentiss (the protagonist) is the archetype and stereotype of all the teenagers in History.

Between 14 and 17, I'd dreamed of all the wonderful things I'd be and do; But mostly I remember being afraid of doubt. I was as passionate about almost everything as anyone else, but I rarely said a word about it. Back then, uncertainty – whether about love, exam results, friendships or the future – felt completely overwhelming and inevitable. As soon as I mastered a specific skill or reached a breakthrough, a new level of challenge loomed before me like a giant, insurmountable wall.
I read once - I no longer remember where - that a teacher, after a challenging class, compared the process of learning and growing up to climb a mountain: the higher we climb, the more we learn, but also, the more we become aware of the vast unknown horizon of our ignorance.
Then between 18 and 21, I was sure one day I'd become "someone". Little by little, from 22 to 31 I learned that it was harder than I could ever imagined, to keep all my dreams alive. And then, from 33 to 41, a new responsibility: The commitment to family and children and I knew it was too late for sure.
And this sums up the core of what this book is about.

In some aspects is also a book about Hope.
But Hope, in Pandora's box, is a curse, not a blessing! The worst of all curses in the "box".
Schopenhauer saw hope as a “madness of the heart” that confuses our understanding of what is possible with what is desired. Hope confounds our desire for something to happen with the probability of it happening, making us vulnerable to despair when said desires do not materialize. However, Schopenhauer also observed that giving up Hope also leads to despair, as it means abandoning not only longing and dreams but also all expectations, closing every door to Life.
So, what should we do? Banks subtly introduces an essay about atheism and religious beliefs, where lurks the "hope" that someone/something "higher" exists. But if Hope is a curse that plagues us with unfulfilled expectations, hyper-sensibility and disappointments then we are utterly doomed.

Just because we want to believe that there has to be something more, someone/thing superior and ineffable to eliminate doubt and insecurities and because some crazy cults born from the hell of the desert have infected the world with their cruel and vengeful ideas, we continue to live in the obscurantism of ignorant superstition.
The Lord is my shepherd" - Thanks a fucking lot. So we live like sheep. But everything is ok because we're doing the Lord's work. Sure we skinned her alive and threw her in the salt pan, but we were doing it to save her soul. The original sin: Shit! What sick fuckwitt thought that one up?
To Banks, we are a wee daft species on one wee daft planet circling one wee daft star.
We are unable to accept our mortal and definite condition therefore something else must be waiting for us beyond this realm; If we could accept that after this life there is nothing else we probably would behave differently. If we really had a conscience of our limited existence we wouldn't be so ready to kill each other.

It's happening all the time; Death squads are torturing children. The Israelis are behaving like the Nazis and the Muslims just execute those who can't fight. And people, innocent people just scream and die; get arrested, tortured and executed because they're poor or help the poor or they wrote a pamphlet or let their hair shown in public or they are just in the wrong place at the wrong time; and no one comes to rescue them, and the tortures never get punished; they retire, they even survive revolutions because they have such fucking useful skills, and no super-hero comes to save the people being tortured, no Rambo bursts in; no retribution; no justice, divine or any other kind; nothing... and that's just it!

I was raised in the scientific school of Plato, Newton, Nietzsche, Bacon, Touring, Einstein and all those exponents of the purest rational reasoning; I believe in "Evidence" and "Demonstration". If a thesis is proposed then we must produce the antithesis and reach a verifiable conclusion. Everything else outside that dynamic is baseless speculation. It's interesting as an exercise but void of consistency and TRUTH.
But, on the other hand, we have "Faith" and "Hope", and the great Newton, contradictorily besides being a scientist (the greatest of all, perhaps), also was an alchemist who spent time studying "magic" and the occult, perhaps more than physics. So, where lies reality?
We either suffer from lurking scientism in the background of our consciences or blind Faith in the Unknown in the front.
Banks may be right in saying that we are a wee species which behaves like a locust plague putting our faith and hopes in "Ghosts", but still, we also are the deepest mystery of the universe with our contradictions.
I, as James Lovelock, don't believe in the existence of aliens out there in space. In the Universe, we are a unique freak show, an anachronism. But if they existed, I bet they would be baffled by our behaviour which would greatly amuse them before they decide to wipe us out and prevent our stupidity from spreading through the Universe.

Banks is one of my favourite writers. Either as mainstream author Ian Banks or in the skin of his alter-ego, Ian M Banks author of sci-fi with his wonderful "Culture" universe.
To me, the greatest strength of his books comes from how Banks uses human beings' dynamics to address philosophy, religion, politics and everything else that makes humans.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a rare case of reading a novel almost entirely because of its famous first line: “It was the day my grandmother exploded.” I was familiar with the quote from the Bookshop Band song “Once Upon a Time” (video on bottom right here), which is made up of first lines from books, but had never read anything by the late Iain Banks, so when a copy of The Crow Road turned up in the free bookshop where I volunteered weekly in happier times, I snapped it up.

There’s a prosaic explanation for that magical-sounding opening: Grandma Margot had a pacemaker that the doctor forgot to remove before her cremation. Talk about going out with a bang! To go “away the crow road” is a Scottish saying for death, and on multiple occasions a sudden or unexplained death draws the McHoan clan together. As the book starts, Prentice McHoan, a slothful student of history at the university in Glasgow, is back in Gallanach (on the west coast of Scotland, near Oban), site of the family glassworks, for Margot’s funeral. He’ll be summoned several more times before the story is through.

Amid clashes over religion with his father Kenneth, a writer of children’s fantasy stories, plenty of carousing and whiskey-drinking, and a spot of heartbreak when his brother steals his love interest, Prentice gets drawn into the mystery of what happened to Uncle Rory, a travel writer who disappeared years ago. The bulk of the book is narrated by Prentice, but shifts into the third person indicate flashbacks. Many of these vignettes recount funny mishaps from Kenneth or Prentice’s growing-up years, but others – especially those in italics – reveal darker matters. As Prentice explores Uncle Rory’s files from a project called “Crow Road,” he stumbles on a secret that completely changes how he perceives his family history.

This reminded me of John Irving at his 1970s‒80s peak: a sprawling coming-of-age story, full of quirky people and events, that blends humor and pathos. In all honesty, I didn’t need the mystery element on top of the character study, but it adds direction to what is otherwise a pleasant if lengthy meander through the decades with the McHoans. I particularly appreciated how Prentice’s view of death evolves: at first he’s with Uncle Hamish, believing there has to be something beyond death – otherwise, what makes human life worthwhile? But Kenneth’s atheism seeps in thanks to the string of family deaths and the start of the Gulf War. “They were here, and then they weren’t, and that was all there was,” Prentice concludes; the dead live on only in memory, or in the children and work they leave behind. I can’t resist quoting this whole paragraph, my favorite passage from the novel:

Telling us straight or through his stories, my father taught us that there was, generally, a fire at the core of things, and that change was the only constant, and that we – like everybody else – were both the most important people in the universe, and utterly without significance, depending, and that individuals mattered before their institutions, and that people were people, much the same everywhere, and when they appeared to do things that were stupid or evil, often you hadn’t been told the whole story, but that sometimes people did behave badly, usually because some idea had taken hold of them and given them an excuse to regard other people as expendable (or bad), and that was part of who we were too, as a species, and it wasn’t always possible to know that you were right and they were wrong, but the important thing was to keep trying to find out, and always to face the truth. Because truth mattered.

That seems like a solid philosophy to me. I’ll try more by Banks. I also nabbed a free copy of The Wasp Factory, which I take it is very different in tone. Any recommendations after that? Could I even cope with his science fiction (published under the name Iain M. Banks)?

Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Thomas Stroemquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

I bet half of the reviews of 'The Crow Road' has the opening sentence somewhere in them - it is a great one; 'It was the day my grandmother exploded.' if you add on the next, you get a bit of the feeling of the book; '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.' This is more Marian Keyes-territory (yes, really!) than the over-the-top violence and gore of 'The Wasp Factory' or 'Canal Dreams'.

I recently 'discovered' Banks (embarrassingly I thought he was a crime mystery writer for some indeterminable reason) and the four I read since are amazingly different. This Scottish family saga/coming-of-age story is the best one this far and the only missing star is because of the overly long last third - still good reading, this story could have done without the 'murder mystery' that feels almost tacked on and takes over a bit too much.

Banks' narrative takes some getting used to, the narrator switches between the main protagonist and third person and jumps between present day and the past (often twice or even three times in a page) - but when you're in, it works. The characters are really good and well-formed and keeps you oriented. Recommended!

[Jessica · Rating 5 out of 5]

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, 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.

[Angus McKeogh · Rating 1 out of 5]

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...

[Manny · Rating 4 out of 5]

_________________________________________

(Gratuitous cross-promotion)

I wrote this minimalist review as a protest against notgettingenough's intolerably wordy screeds. For example, look at her recent review of Jeremy Clarkson. I mean don't. Don't!

[Emmy B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[JK · Rating 4 out of 5]

On the first page of The Crow Road, Banks delivers one of the best opening lines I’ve ever experienced: '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.'

And Banks just doesn’t seem to stop with his somber yet somehow hilarious prose, drawing us deeply into the McHoan family, and allowing us to explore their histories, their personalities, and their reprehensible yet utterly relatable behaviours.

This is story of family, love, and loss; Banks gives us Prentice - a narrator akin to an educated loose cannon - and tells Lochgair’s stories with time and space-slipping ease, weaving a rounded yet disorienting picture of family secrets and unrest. There’s nothing linear about the plot, and this is where the magic lies, allowing Banks to hint, tease, and foreshadow his way through the McHoan family values. He swaps from Prentice’s first-person narrative, to that of an all-seeing third-person, and back again; a foreshadowing device in itself, I was living.

Although filled with philosophical ponderings, and commentary on life and death, Banks also inserts little vignettes of memory, which are often hilarious in their delivery. That life can be filled with sorrow, yet with little moments of complete joy, is perfectly true, and Banks highlights this perfectly.

Bank’s characters are so well depicted that they feel like living, breathing people. He nails the family relationships, love hand in hand with bitter jealousy and frustration, and gives us these people as ours to love.

The depictions of Gallanach and other areas of beautiful Scotland were written lyrically and beautifully. The juxtaposition of these settings against those in Glasgow were of a considerable contrast, and, as someone who sticks mainly to confines of Strathclyde, made me ashamed not to have seen far more of my beautiful country than I have.

And the man is away the crow road himself. One of my favourite Scottish authors, all we can do is feel blessed he has left behind such a wealth of stories and talent for us to remember to him with.

“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.
Then, every day was a week, each month a year. A season was a decade, and every year a life.”

[Stuart · Rating 2 out of 5]

Clever writing and quirky characters, but meandering and disappointing
Perhaps I'd be labeled a Philistine for not liking this book, but so be it. I'm mainly a fan of Iain M. Bank's Culture and other SF novels, very clever and urbane and slightly cynical but always a sense of fun and indulging in outlandish world creation. I even crossed over to his non-SF more contemporary novels and liked Complicity and The Wasp Factory for their dark and sinister tales of troubled pyschopaths but The Crow Road just bored me from start to finish. Sure, a story about a large, complex, and quite eccentric Scottish family over several generations isn't a bad thing, and told in his typical "aren't I such a clever writer?" style of non-chronological snippets and changes of viewpoint, it's got some similarity to Use of Weapons and Complicity, but the story and characters never gripped me, the central mystery was so understated that when it finally came into focus in the closing chapters it didn't seem right, and by then end I was just waiting for the audiobook to be over. There's plenty of good writing here, but the story left me cold.