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A review by tits_mcgee
Marabou Stork Nightmares by Irvine Welsh
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
A tense fever dream drenched in madness and the harsh reality of lower class Scottish housing projects. Really dark, really bleak, and actually quite funny.
Irvine Welsh takes you right to the edge of your comfort zone and holds you there, threatening to push you over. His ability to retain so much control over the prose while the chaos is brewing is unprecedented, I really loved his writing style, including the playful use of ergodic literature (thats fancy pants for text that's unconventionally placed on the page), and after a while I even got used to the Scottish dialect, though I admit that at first it was a head scratcher and put me off.
I heard the whole book in a young Ewan McGregor's voice - how he sounded in Trainspotting. It probably took me twice as long to finish as it should because I wanted to savour that Scottish flavour instead of speeding through in my normal internal reading voice.
The premise is really weird, our "protagonist" is a bastard in a coma: Roy Strang; a real scum bag kind of character. The book follows three plots, we fluctuate between memories of childhood trauma followed by his chaotic behaviour; visitors talking to him at the hospital, and a comatose dream about hunting Marabou Storks. The latter is the one he's trying desperately to live in, to avoid all the brutality of reality and the consequences of his actions. I loved this idea, and couldn't help but draw similarities with the reason books are so great, they take us away from our own lives for a brief moment, and just like Roy we are escaping.
Fantastic book. I'm an instant Welsh fan.
10/10
Irvine Welsh takes you right to the edge of your comfort zone and holds you there, threatening to push you over. His ability to retain so much control over the prose while the chaos is brewing is unprecedented, I really loved his writing style, including the playful use of ergodic literature (thats fancy pants for text that's unconventionally placed on the page), and after a while I even got used to the Scottish dialect, though I admit that at first it was a head scratcher and put me off.
I heard the whole book in a young Ewan McGregor's voice - how he sounded in Trainspotting. It probably took me twice as long to finish as it should because I wanted to savour that Scottish flavour instead of speeding through in my normal internal reading voice.
The premise is really weird, our "protagonist" is a bastard in a coma: Roy Strang; a real scum bag kind of character. The book follows three plots, we fluctuate between memories of childhood trauma followed by his chaotic behaviour; visitors talking to him at the hospital, and a comatose dream about hunting Marabou Storks. The latter is the one he's trying desperately to live in, to avoid all the brutality of reality and the consequences of his actions. I loved this idea, and couldn't help but draw similarities with the reason books are so great, they take us away from our own lives for a brief moment, and just like Roy we are escaping.
Fantastic book. I'm an instant Welsh fan.
10/10