A well-written intriguing inner monologue but eventually neither complex nor deep as a whole work.I went into this novel expecting it to be science fiction. Dead wrong. Once I have an inkling that I want to read a certain book—such as if I hear about the author, read the beginning of the summary,...
It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.The Crow Road is the first novel by Iain Banks that I've read, and ...
Originally published on my blog here in May 2004.Iain Banks' first book length non-fiction writing is on a subject which has little interest to me, and is certainly a book I would not have picked up had it not been for the author's name. The subject is whisky, and I have been a teetotaller for ov...
Right through the 1990s Iain Banks, with or without the M, was my number one author - an edgy, blackly humorous writer who wasn't afraid to mess around with his readers' expectations. Banks would offer up, on the one hand, self-assuredly erudite, multi-layered and (dare I say it?) near-literary t...
There, I said it. The reason I don’t like it is not so much because of the taste – the stuff doesn’t actually have much of a taste of its own, though what it does have I don’t find very attractive – as because of the way it feels in my mouth. There is, for me, something unbearably, slidingly glut...
You did not.’‘I did! Why do you think I was so nervous earlier in the Pig?’‘You’re always nervous when I’m doing something you can’t control.’Phil made a noise you could only call a gasp. ‘Now that’s not true, Ken. That’s unfair.’ He seemed genuinely hurt.I put a hand on his shoulder. It was stil...
The rain is slackening. There’s no car in the driveway. Still, when I let myself in I try to walk normally, but the house is empty. My hand moves to where my phone should be, then drops. I head to my room, lie on my bed, but only for a few minutes. I get up and fetch my mum and dad’s cordless. ‘H...