I just realized that most of the books I write about here are those that I rant and rave about--because they're either really good, A+, or really terrible, D-. But this one, The Crow Road, by Iain Banks (a surfeit-of-"i" author), is mostly good, a solid B. Even a B+. Also, I just noticed that it was published in 1992, and had already been made into a BBC miniseries. (How come my TiVo didn't tell me this??!!)
The story is set in Scotland, both in Glascow and in the countryside, in Gallanach, which could be
made up, or also, real. Who knows? To me, the whole place seems like an exotic, fairy-tale land. There's just something about Scotland that is mysterious and dreamy and fun, though it's really just England North. Maybe it's my high school experience with the great musical, Brigadoon (I starred--in the chorus, mostly in the back, because I can't really sing)....
There are some wonderful descriptions here of drunken epiphanies and hangovers and miscellaneous drinking adventures. Like this:
"I was so drunk at the time this actually seemed like quite a smart idea....if I'd thought I was remotely capable of coordinating my hand, eyes and brain to that degree. The only reason I could get my drinking hand and my mouth in roughly the same place at approximately the same time at this stage in the evening was because I'd had so much recent practice at it. And even that comparatively simple system wasn't a hundred per cent any more; I'd missed my mouth twice already and spilled small amounts of whiskey onto my chin and shirt. I'd carried it off with dignity, though."
I like this, too:
"Either I had been put to bed, I thought, as I woke up next morning, in the wee cold room at the top of the house, or my standard drunk-person's on-board auto-pilot facility was improving with experience."
The story hop-scotches back and forth, between generations. There's Kenneth, young and courting, along with his brothers Hamish and Rory, and then a father of boys, called Prentice and Lewis and James. Sometimes Prentice is wee boy, others he's a uni student. (I love that, "uni"!!) The point of view shifts, back and forth, until it finally stays with the sons. At first, this is a bit confusing--for my Boomer brain, at least--since I kept forgetting which guy was which age. Eventually, though, it was not only obvious, but deft and clever.
Like this description of Prentice's exhaustion:
"I had, up until that point, been performing an agonising reappraisal of the indignant signals of total, quivering, painful exhaustion flooding in from every major muscle I possessed. My body's equivalent of the Chief Engineer was screaming down the intercom that the system just wouldn't take any more punishment, Jim, and there was no doubt that I really should have been pulling out and powering down just then..."
Nice. Plus, Banks is a Boomer, born in Fife (!) in 1954.
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