Firstly a belated thanks are in order for one of our new members. Thanks Sarah for your excellent hosting of the Scottish themed Iain Banks evening. An enjoyable read all round featuring a few extra special moments of morse code related joy!
Once we were all sufficiently stuffed of haggis, neeps and tatties (ok maybe Scottish shortbread, but we made the effort), the discussion revolved around the humour used and the themes of class and 'scottishness' that were prevalent throughout the novel.
All of us admitted that the book was very funny in places. The Crow Road is ultimately a mystery and coming of age novel rolled into one. The story was very dark and filled with black humour, death, loneliness and fragmented families. Prentice, the lead character, spent the novel estranged from his atheist father who was disappointed when Prentice 'rebelled' and discovered religion. Banks clearly used the novel to play around with more traditional Scottish views. Thatcherism, mostly a loathing of it, is also explored. The vivid descriptions of rural Scotland are littered with images of forgotten and abandoned industries.
The novel flicks between the generations of the central characters, that was a little hard to get used to but all made sense towards the end. Some of the group felt that the pace of the novel was a bit too slow through the middle.
The ending? Probably as happy and rounded an ending as you could expect from a novel as dark as The Crow Road is. I will leave out any references to the morse code sex scene as I can't type when I'm cringing.
What we liked:
The descriptions of Scotland
The importance of floppy discs
The humour
What we didn't like:
The pointless younger brother
The way the story of the father was developed
The morse code scene (or did we secretly love it?)
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