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The Crow Road was adapted for television by Bryan Elsley for the BBC in 1996. [3] See The Crow Road. Iain Banks. Every time I go through the process of selecting the next book to read, and one of his comes up, I wonder, hmmm...should I now? Or should I put this off until I'm ready; for a special time perhaps. This Bildungsroman is set in the fictional Argyll town of Gallanach, the real village of Lochgair, and in Glasgow, where the adult Prentice McHoan lives. Prentice's uncle Rory disappeared eight years previously while writing a book called The Crow Road. Prentice becomes obsessed with papers his uncle left behind and sets out to solve the mystery. Along the way he must cope with estrangement from his father, unrequited love, sibling rivalry, and failure at his studies.
Paradoxically, though, The Crow Road also includes my favourite supporting character in all of Banks' books, Prentice's father, Kenneth McHoan. I know most people love Rory and his globe trotting bohemianism, but Kenneth is a cooler guy and a great Dad. From his River Game (a home made, violence free game of trade economics) politics and love for his son, to his children's stories, atheism and wonderfully fitting death, Kenneth was the part of The Crow Road I longed to read. When he wasn't there I was thinking about him, and when he was there I never wanted his part to end. Plus, I kinda wish he'd been my Dad. The thing is, Iain Banks is a very special writer. You need to be ready for him because his stories require a lot of focus and patience. This is what makes him great. Almost always, there is a payoff that makes all the wondering of where he's is going worthwhile. For season two there is no more book to dramatise, so the makers are free to play to series one’s strengths. Good Omens 2 is more the Tennant and Sheen Show than ever. If it’s not sure what else it is, perhaps that doesn’t matter.When the Metatron goes to get a coffee at Nina’s shop, he asks her if anyone ever asks for death—a reference to the name of the establishment: Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death! But it also puts one in mind of Suzy Izzard’s stand-up routine Dress to Kill, where she suggests that the Church of England might offer supplicants the option of “cake or death” being far less efficient than the Spanish Inquisition.
The magic shop seen in Episode 4’s minisode ‘Nazi Zombie Flesheaters’ has a stuffed orang-utan sitting on a shelf, a nod to beloved Discworld character The Librarian (a wizard who was turned into an orang-utan in a magical accident early on and decided to stay that way).In the magic shop in episode four’s minisode, David Tennant as Crowley plays with a fez; this was a frequent tic of his successor as the Doctor, Matt Smith’s Eleventh Doctor, who liked to proclaim that “fezzes are cool”. The Hazel Wood is about a young woman trapped in cycles of abuse, negligence, and betrayal. Powerful, dark magic wielded by inexplicable beings push her into situations she’s unprepared for but determined to survive. There’s no big, over-the-top romance, nor is this a fairy tale with a happily ever after. But it does have an ending that satisfies and leaves Alice with the answers she needs to try and move on with her life. By the end of season 2, Nina is in a place of personal growth, having moved through the scariest parts of her story. What comes next is up to her. This book would fit in nicely at this moment in her life. The most important guide here is the way you feel. Listen to your instincts. If you felt that something about your crow sighting was significant – it was. You are the best judge of your own experience. It's so easy to choose this famous opening line for starting a review of Crow Road, and therein lies the danger of focusing only on the sarcasm, the tongue-in-cheek, flippant running commentary provided by Prentice McHoan on the history of his family and on his own growing up process, as angsty and self-conscious and annoying as only smartypants teenagers can be. But there's more going on under the provocative surface, and for me the last line of the quote is the key to the novel: Prentice is obsessed with death, not without reason, seeing as he looses a lot more of his relatives and friends before the end of the novel - can't say who exactly, spoilers and all that ... The quest to define his place in the real world and to come to terms with loss will overshadow the more conventional storyline of Prentice chasing girls and learning about sex. Frankly, I believe this romantic angle could have been handled better : not only could I guess the outcome right from the start, but the final revelations made me laugh at the silly instead of touching my tender bones Morse code WTF . Prentice did have a nice turn of phrase when he describes the girl he loves : the stunning, the fabulous, the golden-haired, vellus faced, diamond-eyed Verity, upwardly mobile scionette of the house of Urvill, the jewel beside the jowls; the girl who, for me, had put the lectual in intellectual, and phany in epiphany and the ibid in libidinous!
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