The Crow Road

"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." So begins Iain Banks' "The Crow Road, " the tale of Prentice McHoan and his complex but enduring Scottish family. Prentice, preoccupied with thoughts of sex, death, booze, drugs, and God, has returned to his home village of Gallanach full of questions about the McHoan past, present, and future. When his beloved Uncle Rory disappears, Prentice becomes obsessed with the papers Rory left behind -- the notes and sketches for a book called "The Crow Road." With the help of an old friend, Prentice sets out to solve the mystery of his uncle's disappearance, inadvertently confronting the McHoans' long association with tragedy -- an association that includes his sister's fatal car crash and his father's dramatic death by lightning. "The Crow Road" is a coming-of-age story as only Iain Banks could write -- an arresting combination of dark humor, menace, and thought-provoking meditations on the nature of love, mortality, and identity.