The Quarry

Iain Banks's last novel is a book of echoes. The story is a familiar one to anyone who has read Banks before: a group of old friends gather one more time after years apart; there's a guilty secret and a mystery which must be uncovered; there's a loner protagonist who....well you get the picture. Its a familiar story but there's one twist...one of the characters is dying from cancer, the disease that killed Banks.

But this is no maudlin tale of loss. Banks started this book before he was diagnosed, so it can't necessarily be seen as a response to his cancer. But he did rewrite parts once he had been diagnosed, so you get some idea of the pain and rage he felt as it spews from the mouth of the dying man in this book.

As I said there are echoes here of earlier novels, The Wasp Factory, Garbadale, Stonemouth, even Whit. Kit is a teenager with Aspergers who doesn't know who his mother is. Guy, his father, is dying of cancer and they live in an old tumbledown house at the edge of a quarry. Into this come old friends, from Guy's time on a film making course back in the 90's. Together for one last time to say goodbyes. But there's a tape....what's on it and how that affects everyone's motives is the main thrust of the book, along with Kit's attempts to deal with his father's illness and to just “fit in”, which he does with help from one of the friends, Holly.

It's not a hard read. It's superbly written as always and Banks takes potshots at his usual targets: the Tory government; materialism; the lack of purpose in the current generation....but it never holds up the story.

For me it's not quite up there with Espedair Street, Complicity or even Stonemouth. But its a good book and its a crying shame that we have been robbed of any more.