The Crow Road by Iain Banks

[Vertigo]

I was a little disappointed by The Crow Road not because it wasn’t a good well written story – it was – but because it wasn’t as challenging a read as I have come to expect and love with Banks’ non science fiction work.

This is a coming of age story though not a typical teenage one but it is also a lot more than that. It is a thriller, a celebration of Scotland and its West coast scenery and a romance, though also not your typical romance. It is written with Banks’ usual flair, black humour (of which there is plenty) and intimate characterisation. Rather unusually for Banks’ it is largely an easy and enjoyable read and in that it is similar to Espedair street (also very much another Scottish novel). The only aspect that might discomfort some readers is the manner in which the story is deliberately fragmented; skipping around different times, places and generations. There is typically very little warning given on these skips and the reader is left to stitch them together into the complete story. However, so long as the reader does not attempt to understand everything at once and trusts the author they will find all the gaps are eventually and satisfactorily filled in.

An enjoyable book, a great celebration of all things Scottish and certainly the most accessible non science fiction Banks novel I’ve so far read and that, for me, was its weakest point.

 

[The Judge]

I was debating buying this the other day, and having read your review I think I'm glad I didn't bother! I read The Steep Approach to Garbadale a couple of months ago and disliked the continual jumping about in time, especially at the beginning, so if this one is even more fragmented, as it sounds, I'd be jumping up and down in frustration. Mind, I disliked each and every one of his characters, too, and the wish-fulfilment aspect of the mathematical genius girlfriend made me gag, so it could well be I simply can't get on with his non-SF writing generally.

 

[Vertigo]

I think one of the extraordinary things is the difference between his SF and non SF styles; about the only common factor is the rather dark humour that appears in both.

I've not read the Steep Approach to Garbadale yet so can't compare with that but in The Crow Road it frequently took a few sentences to figure out which timeslot you'd just shifted to as there were typically no written clues like titles and there were generally multiple a number of different time chunks in each chapter. However, for all that, I'd also say that once I'd settled into it it flowed remarkably smoothly and was a pretty easy read.

It's also worth noting that it was made into a four part TV series in '96 (which I haven't seen).