Welsh, Scotland's brightest young literary rebel (The Acid House,
stories, p. 181), weighs in with a technically dazzling and
emotionally wrenching portrait of working-class youth wasted in an
emotional vacuum. Roy Strang, in his early 20s, enters the story in
a coma and leaves it in even worse shape. In between, he recounts
his wretched childhood in an Edinburgh housing project, introduces
us to his horrific parents and abject siblings (a thug, a slut, and
a homosexual), and describes his own unfortunate appearance (his
ears stick out; and the family dog mauled him as a kid, leaving him
with a lifelong limp). Matters get briefly sunnier when Roy's
father, who loathes the sorry state of Scotland, drags the family
to South Africa, where the Il-year-old Roy romps in a right-wing
paradise amid a pedophilic uncle and numerous species of exotic
birds, including the marabou stork, a freakish creature that preys
on defenseless flamingoes. Welsh knows a writer's metaphor when he
sees one, and it's this - the marabou stork - that Roy will come
back, in his fevered coma nightmares, to hunt. With great agility,
Welsh manages his slippery, three-pronged story as he traces the
teenage Roy's return to Scotland, at the same time continuing with
the surreal, ongoing pursuit of the marabou stork - a tale that the
author tells in the manner of a mock-colonial narrative. In
Scotland, Roy grows up to become a fair computer systems analyst
and a superb soccer-gang brawler, but he loses stomach for his
aimless life after joining his mates in the gang rape of a club
girl. Miraculously, the rapists are found innocent, but by then
Roy's had enough of Scotland: He moves to Manchester and discovers
salvation in rave culture. It can't last, though, particularly with
the rape victim setting out to exact grisly revenge . . . Welsh's
grasp of the grim beauty that lurks in his characters' shattered
yearnings is even more solid than his ear for their savage dialect.
Magical, without a hint of cloying sentiment. (Kirkus Reviews)
Roy Strang is engaged in a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission: to eradicate the evil predator-scavenger bird, the Marabou Stork, before it drives away the peace-loving flamingo from the picturesque Lake Torto. But behind this world lies another: the world of Roy's bizarre family, the Scottish housing scheme in which he grew up, his mundane job, a disastrous immigration to Africa, and his youthful life of brutality with a gang of soccer casuals. As one world crashes into the other, this potentially charming story of ornithological goodwill mutates into a filthy tale of violence, abuse and redemption.
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