Product Description

As a native of Scotland, bestselling author Iain Banks has decided to undertake a tour of the distilleries of his homeland in a bid to uncover the unique spirit of the single malt. Visiting some of the world's most famous distilleries and also some of its smallest and most obscure ones, Banks embarks on a journey of discovery which educates him about the places, people and products surrounding the centuries-old tradition of whisky production. Using various modes of transport - ferries to the islands, cars across the highlands, even bicycles between bus-stops - Banks' tour of Scotland combines history, literature and landscape in an entertaining and informative account of an exploration in which the arrival is by no means the most important part of the journey.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #75650 in Books
• Published on: 2004-08-05
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 384 pages

Literary Review
"…fiery, variegated, and full of delicious moments"

Lea Valley Star, 22 October 2003
'...the detail is fascinating...very readable...'

Time Out
"It’s a very readable and hugely informative book, and Bank’s gentle humour permeates the pages."

Customer Reviews

Curate's Egg
Raw Spirit is three-books-in-one. I like single malt whiskies a lot and bought the book in anticipation of reading a well-written, informative and amusing tour of the Scottish distilleries and their products. I was not disappointed; Iain Banks' travels to all of the major (and many of the minor) distilleries are well-described, informative and (to the extent that his views on the whiskies sampled agree entirely with my own) accurate. Unfortunately the distilleries, their whiskies and the beautiful (and beautifully-described) countryside around them take up less than half of the book. The remainder consists of (a) anecdotes concerning Mr. Banks' friends, family, youthful (and often not-so-youthful) pranks, and cars, and (b) rants on the Iraqi war, the current state of British vs U.S. politics and the wisdom of legalising drugs. The former, although largely irrelevant to a book on whisky, are clearly of interest to fans of Mr. Banks and his novels, but would have been better kept for an autobiography. The latter, however, are totally inappropriate in this book. I happen to agree with most of what Mr. Banks says, particularly on the derogation of British sovereignty to U.S. (a.k.a. neo-con) hegemony, but these are complex issues and totally out of place in this book where the superficial "rant-and-rave" treatment they get can only be a distraction. This is a book that started with an excellent idea but was highjacked by a self-indulgent author, a publisher's deadline and current events, leaving only a taste of what it could and should have been.

A real dissapointment
Iain Banks is the new "Pub Bore". This book fails spectacularly to either impress or inform... unless you are interested in minutely understanding the handling and performance of the M5 - no, not the motorway, the beemer.
Chapter after chapter of drivel, with the odd paragraph of "Oh, and we visited a distillery, and the car park was nice... Did I tell you about the time I took the 911 down the b925 near Auchenbogle...?
One also gets the impression that this "Jolly" has been funded by one of the major corporates. I wonder if Diageo were impressed?

Talk about an opportunity missed.

Contains about 10% alocohol
Other reviewers have pointed out that this is a real mish-mash of a book and I would go along with that. If you are buying this book with a view to having a ready-made guide to whisky-making in Scotland, don't. On this level it fails miserably and the reader would be far better buying one of the many cheaper pocket guides to whisky that are on the market. Banks describes the whisky making process in about half a dozen pages in the middle of an unrelated chapter, while the details of his whisky tasting sessions are strewn at irregular intervals throughout the book. The lack of an index makes it difficult to locate his views on a particular whisky. All in all, the parts of this book dealing with whisky amount to about 30 - 40 pages mixed inside a 350 page book.

So what else do you get for your money? Well, you get a little autobiographical detail about Banks. As a fan of (most) of his other books I found this quite interesting. Others not familiar with Banks himself may not find this information as entertaining.
You also get various random anecdotes about Banks' friends which sometimes verge on the self-indulgent. There are several tales that I'm sure are of interest to them and them alone.

You also get Banks' commentary on contemporary events. Chiefly, you get his views on the war in Iraq. Briefly, Banks was against it and becomes extremely repetitive when referring to it.

You also get a LOT of incredibly dull stuff about cars, but that is nothing compared to the mind-numbing tedium that accompanies his seemingly endless details about Scottish roads. This book has page after page of utterly pointless information about just about every road north of Glasgow and in these sections is, quite frankly, unreadable.

In summary - as a book about whisky it is less than adequate, as an autobiography it is patchy, as social commentary it is repetitive, as a trevelogue it is dull, dull, dull.