Crow Road

Crow Road is a novel by the noted British author Iain M Banks.

Craving for more books by Bank and needing a few books to bring with me on my holiday (mostly consisting of doing nothing but reading and being on the beach) I started by taking a trip to my local library. I didn't really find anything interesting and there wasn't any Banks in the science fiction section, so I tried in the mainstream section (I will read almost anything if it's well written.... and sometimes they put books in the wrong department), anyway I ended up with Crow Road.

Before I review this book, I have to tell you that I had to deliver the book back to the library and I'm having a really hard time remembering the names of any of the places and most of the people in the book (it's been a month since I finished it - I am a bit behind writing these reviews). And lets get a few thing straight: There isn't any spaceships, any robots or a single laser gun in Crow Road - this book is as far from being SF as a book can get!

CR takes place in Great Britain (Scotland, I think) and over a long period of time, from somewhere around 1930 to today - most of the story is told in flashbacks and as stories heard and read by the young Prentis as he grows up and becomes a man. I'm having a very hard time explaining what this book is about (and that's not because I have forgotten anything, I would have had trouble explaining it the day after I closed the book). Maybe CR is mostly a lot of small stories that spin a web or maybe it's one story told in small shattered fragments. Maybe CR is a dropped mirror - shattered in a thousand pieces but still in the shape of the original mirror. I can't really say, but this is without a doubt one of the best written books I have read in a long while.