A Good Read The Crow Road by Iain Banks
‘He’s away the crow road.’ So says Prentice McHoan’s grandmother before she takes that path, and sadly, so now is Banks himself. What better way to recognise the enormous contribution he made to modern fi ction than to revisit some of his work, and what better place to start than ‘The Crow Road’?
For a start, it has one of the best opening lines in modern literature: ‘It was the day my grandmother exploded.’
In the aforementioned Prentice, it has
an engaging, honest and endearing hero, and in his family it has a complex, disturbing and fascinating cast of characters. There is drama, humour, mystery
and philosophy in equal measure. What’s not to love?
The central strand of the story is the disappearance of Prentice’s Uncle Rory – presumed dead by many, but presumed alive by Prentice’s father, Kenneth.
Rory’s unfi nished papers include
the idea of ‘Crow Road’ – a novel? a factual account? Nothing is clear. As Prentice attempts to unravel the thread, Banks moves his own story backwards and forwards in time, switching perspectives and retelling events from diff erent angles. For a novel which is frequently about death, there is an awful lot of humour too – often dark, but equally hilarious.
Fans are divided on which of Banks’ novels is his best. It’s a hard choice. How do you choose
between say ‘The Wasp Factory’ and ‘Complicity’? Many readers would stake a claim for his science fi ction, written as Iain M Banks, and ask you to ‘Consider Phlebas’. I have a great deal of aff ection for his whisky-logue ‘Raw Spirit’, which is not only well written, but has been responsible for a lot of good drams – cheers Iain. However, whether or not it is his ‘best’, ‘The Crow Road’ is certainly my favourite – and I know I am not alone.
The Enchanted Wood by Enid Blyton
Enid Blyton has been out of favour for many years, but has recently undergone something of a renaissance. A major exhibition of her work has led many to revisit their childhood favourites – and believe me, some of them have stood the test of time remarkably well.
The Enchanted Wood is the fi rst in the Faraway Tree series, in which three children fi nd themselves living close to the most amazing tree you have ever seen. It grows diff erent fruits at diff erent points, depending on how it is feeling.
It is inhabited by all manner of strange folk – Silky the fairy,
the old Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot and the Angry Pixie. At the top lives Moonface, in a perfectly round little house with a slide that runs right to the bottom of the tree. And best of all, there is a small ladder through the clouds which leads to a diff erent magical land every time...
Joe, Beth and Frannie (the names have been modernised from Blyton’s originals) have all manner of adventures there. Sometimes the lands are full of fun – The Land of Birthdays, for example – while others are slightly more threatening – Dame Snap may no longer be Dame Slap, but her school is still somewhere no-one would like to visit!
If you remember loving Blyton as a child, then now might be the time to dig out those old copies. A six and four year old I know rather well, are enjoying these stories just as much as I ever did, if not more!
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