Product Description

Roy Strang is engaged is a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission is 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 emigration to Aftrica, 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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #28596 in Books
• Published on: 1996-02-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Irvine Welsh delivers another grisly yet enthralling insight into the mindset of the Scottish underclass in Marabou Stork Nightmares. This bleak tale is told by Roy Strang, a jug-eared underachiever who happens to be in a coma. As he flits in and out of reality in his hospital bed, we learn about the dysfunctional Strang family--Vet, his well-intentioned dinner-lady mother, John, his violent security guard father, half-brothers Bernard and Tony, disabled brother Elgin and naive little sister Kim.

Growing up on a housing estate in Muirhouse, Edinburgh, Roy unavoidably gets into scrapes with other kids and, as his crimes eventually become more serious, the police. Welsh expertly interweaves into this base reality Roy's surreal hallucination of his time spent in South Africa with "Sandy Jamieson"--the fearless hunter (a figment of his troubled mind) with whom he goes in search of the vicious but elusive Marabou Stork, a beast that isn't what it seems to be. Roy trains his mind to shut out the present and finds comfort in his African escapism--anything to avoid dealing with the consequences of his actions in real life, and his mother's singing.

The Strangs move out to South Africa in the hope of making a better life for themselves and to raise their "prospects", but they are disillusioned when, in a country where white skin is considered superior, they still fail to achieve their desires. Back in Muirhouse Roy works his way up to systems analyst from a trainee, but in his own time gets his kicks from football hooliganism; he gets involved with a bad crowd whom he finds himself joining in the docks before long.

The exercise and abuse of power is a consistent theme throughout the book: it's depicted between the hunters and animals, nurse Patricia Devine and Roy, Roy and the family dog, uncle Gordon and Roy, Lochart Dawson and the black South Africans, rapists and their female victim. Having been abused in his early years--physically, verbally and sexually--Roy, in a comatose state, is unable to fight anymore and is rendered a victim as well as a perpetrator in his state of limbo.

Using style nuances now familiar in his work, such as writing in dialect and eschewing quote marks, Welsh presents a modern-day Kafka-esque tale of exaggerated realism, told with dark humour and making sure to blunt any polished edges. --Angela Boodoo

Review
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)

Synopsis
Roy Strang is engaged is a strange quest in a surrealist South Africa. His mission is 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 emigration to Aftrica, 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.

Customer Reviews

The best one so far.
This is Welsh's best novel. An excellent book written in Welsh's Scottish slang style with an absorbing story line. This book, more so than the rest, really leaves the reader in awe of Welsh and his extraordinary talent as a writer.

5 stars is not enough
You will have got the gist of the plot from the other reviewers, so I won't bore you with that.
What I will say is that book shows us that Welsh is a genius. How he can lead us through the life of such a complex character as Roy Strang in such detail in relatively few pages, and make it intensely readable puts Dickens to shame.

M.S.N. shows how someone can be good, but be totally evil. The Roy Strang of Edinburgh & the Roy Strang elsewhere are poles apart but very much the same character. I believe that Welsh clearly shows us here how repression & denial of oneself can totally warp a character. Welsh puts you so firmly in his characters head that you can be homophobic while enjoying dreams of homosexual acts, feel the sickened innocent at a gang rape while being as brutal as the others & so on. How to become so sickened by yourself that you must destroy yourself.

'Trainspotting' may have made a big name but only due to becoming a cult film, this one is a greater work. I feel that in time it may even come to be be regarded as a 20th century classic but don't let that put you off, it is very readable.

amazing
There is no way you can prepare yourself for this book, you just have to read it and see where it takes you. There are so many issues and themes raised in this book and how peoples actions have knock on effects and change peoples lives, often without realising until later looked back on them.
Definately one for multiple reads as well!
Thank you Irvine Welsh!