The Crow Road

Rating:
Summary: Versitile Banks Takes a Stab at Family Saga
Review: One of Banks' longer works of fiction (as opposed to the science fiction he writes as Iain M. Banks), The Crow Road is an outstanding novel. This time around, we find Banks taking on a family saga. Amazingly Banks is able to pull off such a story. He weaves a complex and intriguing family story and for extra bite, adds a little mystery to keep things interesting.

There's something haunting and magical in everything I've read by Banks and The Crow Road is no exception. It's a shame it can't be found in the United States. Hopefully Banks begins to receive the attention he deserves.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating:
Summary: T'riffic
Review: This book, more than anything else, was a friend to me. At points, it lost the plot (literally; I hadn't a clue where it was going), but I found I just didn't care; it didn't matter, because it was written so well and depicted landscapes and mood brilliantly (plus the highs and lows of Prentice McHoan). A Banks must-read, if slightly more domestic than his more controversial works, but hey, that's no bad thing. And please, more people review this book! I'm like the only one here!

Rating:
Summary: Banks at his best...
Review: This is an excellent book - my favourite Banks novel (I've read all his non-SF novels). Prentice is a great character, and someone you can't but help feel sympathy for. Great writing, great story, and some spot on cultural references from the early 90s (I was the same age as Prentice at the time the book is set). If you liked this one, then you should also check out 'Whit',also by Banks, which is absolutely hilarious...

Rating:
Summary: Brilliantly Characterised
Review: This is definitely the best of non-sf Banks that I have read (them all apart from Complicity). True, the plot is plodding, nothing really happens much for the first third of the book, but the characters are some of the most engaging, colorful, witty and loveable ever written. It is so easy to identify with them and their struggle with their families and their lives. No part of the story is cliched, it is all completely new and refreshing. The struggle Prentice (lead narrator) has with his father is one most of can identify with.

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the read.
Review: This is the first book by Iain Banks I've read, and I expect to read more given that this book was excellent. It took time for the characters to grow in my mind but by the end of the book I didn't want to say goodbye. It also offered an endearing picture of Scotland.

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