A dark tale with plenty of grit. There is lots happening to maintain interest and the characters are many and varied. What really kept me reading though was not the plot or the people but the quality of the writing. Banks has a wonderful way with words, and an often sardonic sideways look at life.
Although it's not really my kind of book, I cannot help but admire the quality, which is exceptional.

This is a masterpiece which British fiction should be inordinately proud of. It is sympathetic to Scotland's culture,politics,scenery and history. The author creates a central figure, Prentice,who is credible as a boy,teenager and young man. His joy and his angst are equally well portrayed. And all that is mentioning the storyline. It is created gradually with hints of the problems to be revealed. Then it becomes a riveting murder story. This book is a superb read.

My first ever Iain Banks novel, and it was most certainly captivating. What an opening line to a story that kept me hooked and wove me expertly into its web. I have heard this authors name many times before, and i knew they had a big following and some of their stories had been turned into television programes, but i did not realise how absorbed i would be into McHoan's story and his dissecting what he comes across when he returns home. Not going to give anymore of the story away, but this book was out of my usual reading genre and it goes to show sometimes you have to take a step in a new direction to find books that can take you on a different type of journey.
http://books-and-thebigscreen.co.uk/books/the-crow-road25t…ition-iain-banks/
reviewed on goodreads under the name kimothy and on facebook blog page https://www.facebook.com/booksandthebigscreen

This is an early novel of Bank;s in his contemporary novel mode - you can see that it's the work of a fine writer; characters are well sketched - the movement between present and past sometimes fuddled me - but its bleak landscape and milieu was rather depressing for me. I have to admit that I like the science fiction side to Banks' works better although recognising his skill. The travails of the young man at the centre of the novel are of course well rendered - but there is a lack of lyricism somehow. Very worthy ..

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 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.

The Crow Road by Iain Banks a dark tale that is worthy of every star you could give it. I have enjoyed several books by this author over the years mostly ones that my mother has recommended to me, this time it will be me recommending to her that she reads this one. This is your typical Banks in that its dark and gritty and if you are familiar with his work you will recognise the writing style, and it’s definitely worth a try if you haven’t. The style is fresh in a genre that is becoming dreary and same old dame old, dark gritty and depressing, this brings a new shine to a great genre. There is a great flow to this story and it can get a little confusing at times, if you pay attention you will be able to keep up and enjoy the story.

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 mostly told bt the protagonist Prentice McHoan. I could not male my mind up if this book was a family drama or a murder mystery. The characters are interesting especially Kenneth. Thiere is a mixture of sibling rivalry, politics and religious beliefs. The pace is fast. The are a lot of characters but they all 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.

Not to my personal taste. I am not reviewing on Goodreads for this reason.

I read this through tears. Free-flowing, noisy, bleary, snotty tears. Tears for Iain Banks, who will now never write another glorious masterpiece of a book. Tears for me, and the girl I once was – the girl who read all of his books the first time around. The girl in the cold flat with no central heating and never any tea bags, who kept warm on the promise of the future, in the pub on the corner.

And tears for grandmother, of course, because she exploded.

"It was the day my grandmother exploded."

I love The Crow Road now as much as I did when I first read it, when it was published in 1992.

Reading Iain Banks' writing is like slipping into a warm, softly-scented bubble bath, or drinking a mug of hot chocolate by the fire on an icy-cold snowy night. Seriously, I could read and re-read his books forever. Iain Banks is my desert island author.

The Crow Road is a Scottish Bildungsroman about young protagonist, Prentice, finding his way through life with the help of sex and drugs, and stumbling into a dark family mystery, and setting out on the ultimate adult's adventures in death. 'The Crow Road' as an expression is a metaphor for death, and death stalks the pages from the very beginning, when grandmother, Prentice tells us, exploded.

It's a book about stories – the stories of Prentice and his family, the opaque mystery of his Uncle, who has disappeared, leaving only some papers lying around for Prentice to obsess over.

What strikes me most, when I've come to re-read this most gorgeous book, is the stark black humour that had me choking over my hot chocolate, and the warmth of the writing: reading about the family and its mysteries and secrets is to live with them for a while, and though there have been many, many fabulous books in the intervening twenty-five years, reading The Crow Road again put me back in a place where reading, and feeling part of the book itself, part of the lives of the characters, was, and is, the centre of everything.

I received a review copy of this book from the publisher.

I've read a few by Iain Banks, there was a book club at my sixth form college that I liked the look of at 17 but the first book up for discussion was The Wasp Factory and I nearly passed out from the horror (it's well written but traumatic).  The Crow Road is generally known as one of Banks' more reader-friendly novels, at least on the literary side - he's also a science fiction writer but when he does that it's under the name of Iain M. Banks and I've never tried any of that.  What I like most about Banks' writing is the way he allows his characters to be inarticulate - they're very believable.  In The Steep Approach to Garbadale, the main character refers to his late mother's suicide when he was a child as 'that thing with my Mum' - not everybody can describe their formative experiences in quotable sound bites, sometimes you just do not want to talk about it.

The Crow Road is so called because it's all about death.  And cars.  But mostly death.  The main character Prentice's grandmother refers to anybody who has died as being 'away the crow road' and another key character lives on a road of the same name - this is something of a detective story as Prentice tries to figure out why his family is having such a rough run of luck.  This book also has one of the finest opening lines ever - "It all began the day my grandmother exploded", Prentice is at his grandmother's cremation only they forgot to take out the pacemaker, leading to the family doctor who has realised the mistake to come screeching along in his car, having a heart attack himself in the process.

The McHoan family are a jumbled lot - Prentice has rejected atheism and has been rejected by his father Kenneth in the process, his uncle Hamish has set up his own religion, aunt Fiona has been dead for years and nobody has got a clue where Uncle Rory's got to.  Uncle Rory's disappearance is the central mystery of the novel, Kenneth is sure he is still alive even though nobody's heard a thing from him in a decade.  Prentice hears from his old school friend Ashley Watt who heard from a man in a jacuzzi in Berlin (I know, it's amazing) that someone in West Gallinach (their home town) is having the wool pulled over their eyes and Prentice starts to think that this refers to Kenneth about Rory and decides to investigate.

Prentice is a complete idiot but in an utterly believable way.  He is a student, has no money and is utterly impractical but is also good-hearted and is fighting for his family who have no idea what's really going on.  This book is hilarious in so many places in a very black way, at one of the funerals, Prentice remarks to his stand-up comedian brother Lewis that it might be cheaper for the family to invest in a hearse.  Yet, Prentice is so believable - when the time comes to confront the person who may or may not be responsible for several of the trips to the crow road, Prentice takes a deep breath and manages to squeak out something along the lines of "Is there anything you'd like to tell me about all this?", the person turns and glares and Prentice gets scared and runs away.  Hero, absolute hero.  Still, eventually he gets it done.

The Crow Road is no slasher book, it's not riddled with murders, it's more of a Wuthering Heights for Scotland - a bunch of people from a close-knit community going a bit weird.  The novel covers Prentice's father's generation in their early adulthood in between Prentice's disorganised and distinctly amateurish detectiving (he does try bless him, even if he does continually leave stuff on trains) and mixed along with this are Prentice's reminiscences of his own childhood, meaning that the reader has a better idea of what's going on with the case than Prentice does.  Deaths by foul play are not the only ways people head for the crow road, Prentice's friend Darren was in a road accident and died after his head hit a bin at speed (this was the tragedy that led to him finding God, to his father's disgust) and spoilers Prentice's atheist father Kenneth dies while climbing a church steeple in a thunderstorm while loudly denouncing God.  Banks does like to muse on the nature of humanity and The Crow Road is no exception.  What do we want from death?  What do we expect when other people we love die?  It is something that comes to us all but that doesn't make people any more eager to confront it.  It's like we each believe that we can be the exception.  It's no wonder that it messes with Prentice's head - anybody who has really gone through grief knows what that's about.

This is one of my favourite books oddly enough ... it's not the death thing because I'm not one for morbidly over-analysing the human condition, but I think it's partly the very believable family dynamic - chaotic, dysfunction and simmering resentment which has masked the true scandal.  I really liked that Prentice never exposed the whole mess to the rest of his family, knowing that it was easier to deal with the issue quietly - isn't that the way most families deal with conflict?  It may not be healthy, it may not be ethical but it is believable.  I remember reading somewhere that all families have at least three really great stories in them and thinking that there was truth in that and this is a definite example.  Well written, very funny and with a lot of dark truths about the lies that are told and the secrets that are kept amongst those who we have known all our lives.

I first read Iain Banks’ Crow Road not long after it was first published (which will date me a bit!) Given the number of years that has passed, I was keen to see the 25th anniversary edition appear as an ARC via NetGalley and felt it was very much worth a re-read to see how I felt about it now. I’m delighted to say it was as richly immersive and darkly entertaining, if not more so as the first time round.. This book is many things- both the coming- of- age story of student Prentice McHoan and a family history underpinned by secrets, especially the strange disappearance of a favourite uncle. It manages to be both funny (see one of the best ever opening lines) and poignant, particularly as it grows closer to solving the mystery of missing Uncle Rory. What I also love about it is the setting- Scotland- both Glasgow and in particular the fictional west coast village of Gallanach where much of the action is set, creates an incredibly atmospheric backdrop to the development of the story. The sense of Scottishness pervades the language, the cultural references, the characters, to great effect in my opinion.

Whilst Prentice is the main protagonist, the narrative does jump back in forth in time and also occasionally shifts to other people’s viewpoints. This can be a little difficult to follow if you are not paying attention and in some places I felt as if it drags the pace of the story down. For me the book works best when focusing on Prentice’s efforts to locate his uncle and solving the mystery- as well as any scene involving Prentice’s childhood friend, Ashley Watt. She’s an intriguing character and I’d quite happily have read a whole book told solely from Ashley’s viewpoint, had Banks lived to tell that tale. In the end, a great many threads are wrapped up almost too neatly but not so neatly that we are not left wanting more but there are some epilogues that sadly, we shall never have.