Marabou Stork Nightmares

By the time I was half way through "Marabou Stork Nightmares" I was loving it. Roy's African fantasy is so interesting, especially the way it keeps slipping out of his control, with the increasing frequency of homoerotic moments that he tries to suppress. I spotted the Famous Five influence immediately, in the outdated slang he and Sandy use, and the obsession with picnics and typically English food.

Once I'd finished it, I was even more impressed. Roy's fantasies are an escape from his real life, and as the book progresses you learn more about his life and realise why he is so loathe to wake up from his coma. But he gradually loses control of his fantasy as his inner demons break through, just as he had lost control of his show more life.

Bookcrossing definitely got me to read a wider range of books than I used to before I joined. I didn't expect to like Marabou Stork Nightmares at all. show less

Possibly one of my favourite ever book titles, and truly nightmarish too. Narrated by a man in a coma, it starts out as a trip through South Africa on the trail of the eponymous stork, but it quickly becomes clear that this is nothing more than an imaginary smokescreen to obscure the real story of squalid violence that led to him being in a coma in the first place. In this regard you get the picture quite quickly, but it's not until the end that the full picture emerges, and as one might expect from this author, it's brutal and shocking. Not one I'll be able to get out of my head in a hurry.

If you can accept violence and other off-putting contents of a book and want to enjoy a novel that’s compulsively readable, this is it! If you’ve never before heard of Irvine Welsh, he is the Scottish author who is best know for his novel Trainspotting which was subsequently made into a movie. Start with that book and make yourself familiar with the Scottish dialect he uses in it before beginning to read Marabou Stork Nightmares. Use an online glossary, if necessary, to help understand the Scottish vocabulary.

Your next step should be to read this book which is incredibly imaginative. It’s the story of one Scottish lad and his family who live in the projects of Edinburgh, move to Johannesburg, South Africa, but end up returning to show more Scotland. As the story opens, Roy Strang lays in a coma in a hospital. We follow his story on three levels: as he becomes aware of his current environment, as he remembers his past, and as he forces himself into a deeper state of consciousness in which he and a pal are hunting a Marabou Stork.

Oddly, what brought me to reading this book in the first place was a challenge to read a book with the name of a bird in its title! When I looked up that marabou stork, I found one truly ugly bird and wanted to learn more about it, albeit in the form of a novel. What I found was a truly captivating story of an Edinburgh family, a brilliant piece of fiction that I could not put down. Granted that some of the contents of this book (sex, violence, animal abuse) may be off-putting to a few readers, however I was really taken up by the voice of the narrator. The compelling nature of this story reinforced my need to read more books by this author. show less

Irvine Welsh is apparently brilliant at writing some seriously mind-tripping novels. I noticed that a lot of people rated this poorly after getting to the particularly gruesome sections of the book, but that doesn't do the story justice. I found myself weaving back and forth between feeling utter disgust towards the narrator as well as a confusing sense of sympathy. The narration eventually ties together at the end so things begin to come together as to what has truly happened, but the flashbacks Welsh uses also create an interesting picture of what causes human behavior. I promise, there really is a point to all the sick and twisted violence and it's definitely worth reading all the way through!

This book left me freaked out for weeks. It's told from the perspective of someone in a coma, drifting in and out of three levels of awareness: nearly aware of his real surroundings; remembering the events of his life that led him to be in this coma; and in a surreal fantasy African safari. Very well written, easy to follow despite the narrative tricks, and with a narrator that will draw you in somewhat against your will.

I am still thoroughly impressed each time I think of the effort and thought and pure genius imagination that must have gone in to creating this twisted, cerebral, and completely innovative story. Certainly not for the faint of heart, but if you can stomach violence, rape, drugs, and other forms of abuse and deranged characters, this book is worth the read. There's nothing quite like it.

I was engrossed by the bizarre nature of every aspect of this book. I plodded through it, by turns fascinated and horrified. And by the end, I felt like the book had raped my mind. Ick. The biggest betrayal, to me, was that there did not seem to be a redeeming quality to what I had just fed my head.