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The Quarry

by Iain Banks

3.61 of 5 stars 3.61 · rating details · 1,710 ratings · 289 reviews

Kit doesn’t know who his mother is. What he does know, however, is that his father, Guy, is dying of cancer.

Feeling his death is imminent, Guy gathers around him his oldest friends – or at least the friends with the most to lose by his death.

Paul – the rising star in the Labour party who dreads the day a tape they all made at university might come to light; Alison and Robb...more

Paperback, 326 pages

Published June 20th 2013 by Little, Brown (first published January 1st 2013)

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Jun 25, 2013 Ann Godridge rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. "I hate the thought of the world and all the people in it just going merrily on without me after I'm gone. How fucking dare they?"

So speaks Guy, the character in the centre of Banks' last novel, who is dying of cancer. According to his last interview in the Guardian, Banks discovered that he was dying of cancer about ninety percent of the way into the first draft, and poured his initial rage into some of Guy's words. But we also have the much more humane words from Banks writing as himself, when...more

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Jul 23, 2014 Liviu rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013_release_read, mainstream, read_2013, t_notable_books_2013

last Iain Banks novel; while not really a fan of his "mainstream" novels, this one is a must read for obvious reasons and starts actually quite engaging and interesting and promises a lot

a little bit to my surprise I found myself getting back to The Quarry and finally reading it twice as it is a seemingly quiet book that really grows on you

while in his last poignant interview - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/... - Mr. Banks said that were he to know about the cancer, he would have tried to...more

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Jul 06, 2013 Psychophant rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: present, reviewed

It is impossible to dissociate the book from what happened to Banks himself. How can you, when the narrator's father is dying from runaway cancer, and a good part of the book is getting to term with it, as well as various rants and lists of best things... As such I suppose it may be some kind of last words, though clearly fixed in the present days. As such it is a book firmly set in 2012-2013, set against the author's death in June 2013, of runaway cancer.

As usual the characters are well drawn a...more

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Jul 21, 2013 Steven Naude rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This was my first Banks encounter and I was expecting a lot and had no knowledge of any of this previous work. It reminded me of one of those 1950s American plays of great intensity by Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller or Eugene O'Neill - a family gathers in one room and over the space of two hours they haul out the dark secrets and through tears, cursing, accusations and several litres of alcohol they leave relationships in tatters and the mother in tears. Banks does the modern version - someth...more

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Jul 19, 2013 Steven Palmer rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I would have loved to give this 5 stars, especially given the poignant time of its publication. But it just falls short of some of his previous works though we have to remember that Iain was working to deadlines he had no control over.
The theme itself is a well worn one; a group of friends gather together over a weekend a couple of decades after they all met at university. However, Banks gives it one of his usual dark twists and has the leader of the little group in the last throes of terminal c...more

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Aug 07, 2014 Gary rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm a big fan and was very sorry to see Mr Banks's light go out so early in his life. His last book is just like the dust jacket probably says - poignant, thought provoking and funny - you may not recognise all the characters from your own experiences but you may reflect on one or two similar ones that have crossed your path in earlier days - I know I did. It's a book about people and relationships - no spoilers - but it superbly captures the best and the worst aspects of University and later li...more

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Aug 11, 2013 John Braine rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: audiobooks, top-10-2013

I'm still astonished and saddened that Banksy has been lost to cancer, and so quickly. And that his final book, published days after his death features a man dying of cancer, who bears little resemblance to how Banksy dealt with his terrible news.

Anyway.

I enjoyed all the nods to the Wasp Factory, which adds a symmetry to Bankies' career. Of course, if you're going to remind people of the Wasp Factory (best book ever), the comparison is all too likely to fall short. Particularly as I found the...more

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Aug 11, 2013 Ryandake rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

i'm a forever fan of Banks' Culture novels, but i always feel like i'm missing something in his literary fiction.

this novel concerns a group of friends who, years after having been university roommates, gather at the house of one of the group who is dying.

the story is told from the point of view of Kit, the quite oddball son of the dying man. Kit is a wonderful character--definitely weird, but entirely harmless. you gotta love his quirks, though, and his obsessions with things like needing to kn...more

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Jul 06, 2013 Lisa Kennedy rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am a massive Iain Banks fan, however I was very disappointed with his final novel. I really did want to like it, but the characters are unlikeable, the plot is weak and there isn't much insight or depth into the main protagonist/narrator when there was scope for some. I was also dismayed at the amount of political/social/cultural comments which serve only as an aggressive rant from the cancer-stricken character Guy. I know that Bank's politics sat in left, and there is definitely a lot of his...more

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Sep 16, 2013 Roimata Macgregor rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Loved this book so much, it was sad and funny and even more poignant because, of course, Iain Banks was dying as he was writing it. He sounded pretty pissed off and who can blame him. He certainly did not go out quietly, he raged into the dying of the light alright.

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Jun 21, 2013 Nicole rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I wanted to give The Quarry 5 stars. Not least because it's Iain Banks' last novel. But it's not a 5 star book. It's a very good 4 star book with the best rant about modern life ever. RIP Mr Banks.

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Jul 23, 2013 Gordon rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

There is difficulty in writing this review and rating this book given the circumstances of Iain Banks (aka Iain M. Banks) recent passing. So let's play it straight.

It's better than Stonemouth which I rated a 4, but it's not amazing (goodreads "5") so we land soundly in middle 4 (Stonemouth being the bottom of a 4, The Hydrogen Sonata being towards the top of 4, go visit The Player of Games, The Wasp Factory, Consider Phlebas, Use of Weapons, Excession, Look to Windward for 5's).

As Banks said in...more

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Jun 08, 2013 Paul rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Here's my review from The List

Brought forward for publication following Iain Banks’ announcement three months ago that he is ‘officially Very Poorly’ with terminal cancer, The Quarry initially seems a uniquely difficult read. The fact that one of its main characters is in the final stages of that same vicious illness ensures that the author’s own situation is never far from the reader’s mind. But Banks’ instinct for fierce black comedy is as sharp as ever, and he has written a very funny final b...more

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Aug 09, 2013 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It seems a little unfair to suggest that this book was in need of more work, in the circumstances. As it happens, I saw Peter's Friends very recently, and I couldn't help thinking that this book was essentially a re-write of that film (there's a scene in the book where the characters talk about spoof versions of movies they had made while at film school together twenty years later, and I'm a little disappointed that amongst Full Dinner Jacket, Madame Ovary and American Werewolf on Lithium there...more

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Jun 23, 2013 Philtrum rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really wanted to enjoy this novel. Few people cannot be aware of the tragic events surrounding its publication. Since The Wasp Factory (1984) Banks has published 20+ books – split fairly evenly between SF (as Iain M Banks) and mainstream fiction. In April 2013 he announced that he was terminally ill with gall bladder cancer. On 9th June 2013 he died and The Quarry was published 11 days later.

Bizarrely, the story concerns a weekend in the life of Guy (early 40s, terminally ill with cancer) and...more I really wanted to enjoy this novel. Few people cannot be aware of the tragic events surrounding its publication. Since The Wasp Factory (1984) Banks has published 20+ books – split fairly evenly between SF (as Iain M Banks) and mainstream fiction. In April 2013 he announced that he was terminally ill with gall bladder cancer. On 9th June 2013 he died and The Quarry was published 11 days later.

Bizarrely, the story concerns a weekend in the life of Guy (early 40s, terminally ill with cancer) and his 18-year-old son, Kit (who obviously has high functioning autism, though this is not clearly specified in the book). I’m not sure why Banks made Kit autistic. I can’t see how it added to the story and it came across, for me, as unnecessary and trite.

Banks had completed 90% of the novel when he was diagnosed with cancer. Proof, if further proof were needed, that truth truly is stranger than fiction.

The story is told from Kit’s point of view. No one but Guy knows the identity of Kit’s mother, and Guy’s not saying. A group of old university friends visit Guy and Kit for the weekend, to remember good times and, of course, in essence, to say good-bye to Guy. The twin mysteries of the identity of Kit’s mother and a missing videotape (containing a potentially embarrassing film made by the group 20 years earlier) run through the narrative.

As one has come to expect with stories of this ilk there are personality clashes. Old arguments and flings rear their ugly heads. There are a few minor surprises and there is much rumination on the loss of innocence, the ageing process and the meaning of life. Ho hum - all a bit too much like a screenplay to a missing 1980s Alan Bleasdale TV series. Banks’s left-leaning politics have rarely been so clearly laid out.

Everything starts off well enough. The mysteries are set up. It all seems to be building to a big reveal but the denouement is really nothing more than the eloquent death-bed rant of a bitter man worn down as much by his own misplaced, misanthropic convictions as much by the cancer eating away at his body. Banks seems also to have (at least partially) come to this same conclusion as he has one of the characters argue against Guy by (basically) reminding him that the world changes and if you don’t change yourself you’ll simply end up stuck in the past.

In his last interview - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/... - Banks comments: "If I'd known it was going to be my last book, I'd have been quite disappointed that I'm going out with a relatively minor piece; whereas something like Transition, a wild splurge of fantasy, sci-fi and mad reality frothed up together … now that would have been the kind of book to go out on. I'm still very proud of The Quarry but … let's face it; in the end the real best way to sign off would have been with a great big rollicking Culture novel."

I’ve read more than half of Banks’s books – spread equally between his SF and mainstream works. In some ways, as The Quarry was somewhat of an anti-climax, I’m glad the last Banks book I read I won’t be this one.

Reading Banks’s books has given me a great deal of pleasure over the last (nearly) 30 years, since I read The Wasp Factory soon after it was published. He was taken from us much too soon.

In the last few pages, Guy is contemplating his demise. He misquotes Wilde and comments: “We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are staring down the drain.” This made me smile as, for Iain (M) Banks, surely, even more so than for most of, with his impressive world-building skills and incredible imagination, Wilde’s original quote would be much more apt: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

5/10
(less)

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Jul 23, 2013 Craig rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

It's probably impossible to objectively offer an opinion on this book, published as it was just three days after Iain Banks' death. As someone who has all of his books, I can't separate the sorrow I feel for the author's death from my need to like ... to love ... his final work. So I give it full marks and to hell with it.

If I'm being brutally honest, there are things about this book that trouble me - it is almost a mega-mix of previous books, from the Aspergers-suffering main protagonist (think...more

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Sep 24, 2013 Amanda Smith rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I hate to do this, Iain Banks must have been suffering, the mental anguish. What must it have been like as he wrote the book knowing he'd never write another. This is probably a big ask, there can't be anything bigger than dying or knowing you are...but a book can't ONLY be about satisfying the writer, surely? Have an ego but empathy is needed, what will the readers need so they feel nourished by a book? I get that it's a rant book, maybe anyone would want to rant, but it's got to be more than t...more

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Jul 19, 2013 Ian Banks rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary

This is like an updated version of The Big Chill or Peter's Friends, in which a group of university friends descend upon the house of a contemporary, sharing all their old and new baggage and changed lives only to discover that their host is dying.

Being a Banks novel, of course, there is a lot more swearing, drugtaking, sex and talk about pop culture, music and politics. Banks usually has a character in each novel he uses as a mouthpiece for his own particular lefty views. At last, tragically, i...more This is like an updated version of The Big Chill or Peter's Friends, in which a group of university friends descend upon the house of a contemporary, sharing all their old and new baggage and changed lives only to discover that their host is dying.

Being a Banks novel, of course, there is a lot more swearing, drugtaking, sex and talk about pop culture, music and politics. Banks usually has a character in each novel he uses as a mouthpiece for his own particular lefty views. At last, tragically, it feels as though these diatribes (that I agree with, just for the record) grow organically from the characters and situations rather than being forced in as a comment from the authorial voice.

The main character here is Kit, the high-functioning autistic son of Guy, the terminally-ill character. He tells the events of the weekend-long party. Kit has no knowledge of who is mother is. He thinks that one of his father's friends may have dropped him off as a newborn on his father's doorstep but he can't be sure. But he's not the only one looking for things this weekend: the entire crew of friends are searching for a tape containing a compromising film they all made while at university. Some have become quite successful in their lives so if it turns up it could be quite embarrassing for them...

This is a great read. It's filled with Banks's trademark wit and gift for imagery as well as more than the usual quota of eyewatering puns. There is the usual cast of vivid characters and situations which carry the story along merrily until you get to the ending.

But I had a few problems with the ending of this book: the story of Kit's mother is not resolved entirely to my satisfaction (poor me); nor are the events of weekend resolved through more than a brief epilogue which almost-but-not-quite spins the reader a "where are they now" scenario.

Thinking on it, though, I seem to have had a problem with the endings of Mr Banks's last few novels. The ride on the way is almost always fantastic but the endings are a letdown, often too fast or and unbelievable.

Which leads to the elephant in the review, namely the fact that this is Mr Banks's last novel due to his untimely death a month ago, which came without much warning after a career of a certain amount of unbelievability itself. And as a reader I am annoyed because it seemed that in the last few years he was entering a new phase of creativity with his writing after a few meagre offerings.

But as a way to end a career, this isn't a bad way to go out.

(This review also appears on my blog: http://stuffianlikes.aussieblogs.com....)(less)

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Aug 08, 2013 David Roberts rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I am reviewing the novel The Quarry by Iain Banks which is a very good family drama that I bought from a local supermarket. Iain calls himself Iain M Banks on the cover of his science fiction novels and calls himself Iain Banks on his other books which are mostly thrillers. My favourite novel by him is A Song Of Stone. He is one of my favourite authors and does seem to possess an incredible imagination. Anyway the plot to this book is there is a young man who is brilliantly clever but is sociall...more

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Aug 26, 2013 Jason Edwards rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Kit has Asperger’s, we’re led to believe, and outright told at one point, but it comes across merely as a device for narration, not an actual useful character description. Kit’s being called “somewhere between a genius and an utter” only allows for a kind of commentary on commentary—a character who gets to say why he says the things he says— using words and phrases that do not contribute to a conversation, but just keep it flowing. The end result is a first-person narrator who comes across as a...more

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Aug 01, 2013 Chris Hinchley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I confess - this is the first thing that I've read by Banksy (he had the nickname first) in 20 years, and I also own up and confess that the motivator was his recent terribly untimely death and the irony of his last novel being centred around a Guy who is prematurely dying of cancer. This is a darkly comic and very readable modern novel by someone who has given a lot of thought to how we deal (and more often don't deal) with cancer and the nature of dying whilst still being amongst the living -...more

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Aug 31, 2013 Kats rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2013, audio

Quintessentially (Northern) English, this reminds me of the film "Peter's Friends" but set in a less posh circle up North. Our narrator is 18 year old Kit (socially awkward, or perhaps someone 'on the spectrum') whose father, Guy, is dying of cancer and has arranged a final hurrah with his close pals from Uni days. They are spending a long week-end together, and the entire book is set over the course of these 2-3 days.

It's mostly dialogues and diatribes (courtesy of the angry and resentful dying...more

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Oct 14, 2014 Ben rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this book. I really wanted to like it, it's Iain's last book before he died and there were aspects of it that I loved. Some of the humour is very dark and I loved that! On occasions it made me feel uncomfortable.

I think the best way to describe this book is like a piece of art that you find compelling but you wouldn't want it hung on your living room wall!

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Jan 27, 2014 Ric Glowienka rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Ok, I'm a successful author, and I'm dying. What to do...what to do.
It would be very hard not to read this book as an autobiographical obituary. An author of fiction in this situation has the enviable luxury of voicing all of their mostly closely held beliefs, feelings, and prejudices, and who is going to call them on it? This is a rage against the dying of the light, and a sorrowful dirge for the world left behind. But the end is a whimper, not a bang. I enjoyed the vulgarity, although some wil...more

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Oct 16, 2014 Iain rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Not his best book but a poignant outpouring of rage and love, a moving final testament. I still can't quite believe there won't be any more Iain Banks books.

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May 16, 2014 Martinxo rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Recommends it for: People who like French films that don't go anywhere in particular

Recommended to Martinxo by: Library

Shelves: 2014, fiction

Enjoyable and well written without actually going anywhere in particular, rather like one of those French films, I'm sure you know what I mean.

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Jun 09, 2013 Pierre A Renaud marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: to-read-asap

The last book of the late Iain Banks (16 February 1954 – 9 June 2013).

On his cancer diagnosis: "And I just took it as bad luck, basically. It did strike me almost immediately, my atheist sort of thing kicked in and I thought ha, if I was a God-botherer, I'd be thinking, why me God? What have I done to deserve this? And I thought at least I'm free of that, at least I can simply treat it as bad luck and get on with it." 9 June 2013, Iain Banks: In his own words http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotla ...more

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Oct 12, 2014 Venky rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: bibliocase

Kitchener a.k.a "Kit" is eighteen and is 'socially disabled'. He is foisted with the onerous burden of tending to his father Guy, who is in the final stages of his fight with lung cancer. On a dispiriting weekend, Kit receives 7 guests, all of whom are former University mates of Guy. Professing to lend succor to Guy during the time of his enervating crisis, a common motive threads through the minds of every one of them thus linking them in a peculiar endeavour - to find an ancient video tape bur...more

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Oct 11, 2014 Glen Engel-Cox rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is basically Banks' version of The Big Chill: a group of college roommates meet up after many years to comment and reflect on their lives together and apart. Banks uses Kit, an OCD 18-year-old child of the oldest roommate, Guy, as the viewpoint character. Guy happens to be in the last stages of terminal cancer and into that mix, Banks throws in a macguffin of a videotape starring the roommates that each roommate would like to see destroyed, for their various reasons, but which Guy has lost...more

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Sep 22, 2014 Anna Hepworth rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2014

strongly reminiscent of 'The Big Chill', with a group of once were university friends gathering for a weekend of secrets and reveals. Some textural differences - rather than a dead friend, there is a near-to death one; the youngster who is the lends through whom the story is framed is offsrping, not a lover; much stronger sense of politics and place. And yet, full of a sense of frustration, of confusion - all that energy they had as students, and here the world is a darker, grimmer, place.

There...more strongly reminiscent of 'The Big Chill', with a group of once were university friends gathering for a weekend of secrets and reveals. Some textural differences - rather than a dead friend, there is a near-to death one; the youngster who is the lends through whom the story is framed is offsrping, not a lover; much stronger sense of politics and place. And yet, full of a sense of frustration, of confusion - all that energy they had as students, and here the world is a darker, grimmer, place.

There are some very uncomfortable scenes - one which momentarily feels like it is about to turn into a rape scene in particular - but this has a lot to do with the subject matter. While ostensibly the friends who have come to visit are all motivated by finding a video recording that they all feel has the potential to destroy them, they are also navigating the minefield of dealing with a dying man who has never pulled his verbal punches, and has less motivation to do so now.

The story reads almost as a polemic. The viewpoint character struggles to understand the implicit rules of social interaction as a general rule, and there is much in the internal monologue about identification of various conversational gambits, giving much opportunity for a frustration at the duplicity of people to come out. And the speeches (rants) of the dying individual, peppered throughout, about the horror that is our world, and the people within. There is a poignant scene where he talks about suicide, but his inability to do so in a way that didn't traumatise innocent bystanders, which is possibly one of the better discussions on a sensitive topic that I've seen.

Hard going in places, because the majority of characters aren't particularly likeable - that little bit too much 'true to life', such that their flaws are so much more apparent than anything else. And the ending is rushed, the payoff for the effort of negotiating the unpleasantness not quite satisfying. The major plot point of the missing item is resolved, but in a way that makes it feel that the author had had enough of it already, and just wanted it over and done with. (less)

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About Iain Banks

This author also published science fiction under the pseudonym Iain M. Banks.

Banks's father was an officer in the Admiralty and his mother was once a professional ice skater. Iain Banks was educated at the University of Stirling where he studied English Literature, Philosophy and Psychology. He moved to London and lived in the south of England until 1988 when he returned to Scotland, living in Edi...more

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“Once you get over the simple unpleasantness of it - I suspect most people would gag, the first time - it is easier to wipe somebody else's bum than it is your own, because you can see what you're doing and use both hands at once if necessary. The whole process is much more efficient and uses no more toilet paper than is strictly required, so it's better for the environment, too. If we were really green we'd all have somebody else wipe our bums, though I can't see it catching on.” — 0 likes

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