It took 16 years for Iain Banks’ celebrated novel “The Crow Road” to get published in the United States. After reading the first few chapters, one is tempted to audibly curse the delay.
The novel begins, “It was the day my grandmother exploded,” and the mirth that follows often eclipses that laugh line. Banks’ writing can be beautiful and profound when it isn’t scathing in its black humor. But “Road” is a frustrating read all the same, spilling with gorgeous detail but ultimately unable to avoid a hackneyed resolution.
The Scottish writer (“The Wasp Factory,” “Dead Air”) introduces us to Prentice McHoan, a young man whose sprawling family has left him with plenty of big questions to ponder.
His father’s rejection of religion has formed a wedge between the two that may not be overcome. The clan’s notorious Uncle Rory rose to local fame before his disappearance, an absence that touches all of their lives. And the death of Prentice’s doddering grandma has left him with one less ally.
We haven’t even mentioned Prentice’s delirious crush on Verity or his preoccupation with the feisty Ashley. And whenever the McHoan family approaches normalcy, a tragedy cuts them down at the knees.
That Banks can juggle such an assortment of oversized characters is one of the book’s key selling points. But pinning down “The Crow Road’s” main storyline takes some doing. Prentice might seem confused by love, family loyalty and the cruelty of high expectations, but it’s his fascination with Uncle Rory that gives the novel its purpose. Just where did his uncle take off to, and why isn’t Prentice’s father worried as to his brother’s whereabouts?
Banks tells his tale with the kind of confidence that lets him hopscotch through the years like someone skipping stones across a pond. It’s hard to say what age Prentice and his pals will be from page to page, although many of the childhood flashbacks do little to nudge the story along. “Road’s” leisurely pace meshes well with the amount of characters and detail to be absorbed.
And any potential tempo concerns seem negligible so long as Banks bombards us with vivid wordplay. Consider how Prentice recalls losing his virginity:
His first partner “initiated me into the whole sticky, smelly, noisy, potentially fatal, potentially natal, sordid and sublime act,” he writes.
If only all of “The Crow Road” were as precise. The longer “The Crow Road” goes, the weaker the writing becomes. Later, Prentice describes a hangover with the kind of excess a dime-store novel might eschew. The following could inspire a headache all on its own:
“Somebody had stolen my real body and replaced it with a Prentice-shaped jelly mould packed full of enhanced-capacity pain receptors firing away like they were auditioning for a Duracell commercial,” he writes.
Once “Crow” reaches its halfway mark the humor, and the scenarios laid out before us, start to sag. Prentice, who we hope to throw our arms around as he slowly comes of age, remains at arms length. The character’s benchmarks for maturation are too bold-faced for a protagonist in such ambitious fiction.
The story’s mystery elements, which initially unfold cautiously, gain speed faster than the book can contain. The final chapters feel more like genre fiction than the work of a truly inspired writer. And a romance that once seemed an afterthought becomes a crucial cog in Banks’ narrative.
“The Crow Road,” when it bothers to stay in the present, is set at the start of the Gulf War, allowing some characters to wax political about the conflict. But the story could be dropped into any modern time frame. Family dysfunction has no expiration date.
“The Crow Road” resembles one of John Irving’s lesser stories, a meandering saga with characters who do’t linger after the final passages are read. But Irving wouldn’t wrap his stories up in the conventional fashion Banks resorts to here.
Christian Toto is a freelance writer in Denver.
