The Quarry

Title: The Quarry
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 2013 by Little, Brown
Genre: Humorous drama
Pages: 326


Another brilliant present from Santa! Man, that guy... I'd wanted to read The Quarry as soon as it came out, but put off getting it since... well, it felt so final, I suppose. This being Mr. Banks' last book. I haven't read even half of his books, plenty to go, but still. As soon as I got it -Santa was a little late- and finished the 3-5 books I was currently reading, I picked The Quarry up and seriously did not want to put it down. Not for sleep, not for work. That's the dilemma of a damn good book: you either read it in a few big gulps and then it's over, or take your time and kinda... torture yourself with not reading. I went with the former, and now I'm sad that it's over. But also happy, because it was a damn good book. 

The Quarry has the same kind of premise as Banks' first book, The Wasp Factory: a father and peculiar son, living alone in a large house pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Kit, however, is not homicidal, just "on a spectrum that stretches from 'highly gifted' at one end to 'nutter' at the other." His father, Guy, is very much dying of cancer. His old group of friends, who used to live with him in the large house before Kit's time, are all coming together for one last weekend. And to find this one damn movie they made as twenty-somethings. Everyone is very adamant that it's not a porno, but...

Mr. Banks died of cancer himself last year, but apparently this book was almost finished by the time he found out that he was sick. The way Guy talks about his illness and his very imminent death, it sounded very real and painful. Maybe The Quarry was a way for Mr. Banks to come to terms with his own life ending so damn early. The book's publication was pushed forward, but he passed away about two weeks before it came out.

But it's not a sad book! Not by a long shot. I giggled to myself and even laughed out loud. Kit views the world differently from most neurotypical people, and there are references to current affairs and movies and even Gangnam style! It's about death and not wanting to die, but also about life and living it your own way, and it's definitely not a porno tape.


   I've watched a few people when they're asleep, and they're all the same: old-looking, or dead. I probably ought to have felt depressed at this, though at the time I felt oddly comforted, and in a strangely satisfying position of power. Also, I was usually more worried that they were about to wake up and start screaming. (I'm not a murderer or a rapist or anything; I just wanted to look, but I can reveal that people most definitely don't like waking up in the middle of the night to find somebody staring at them from a half-metre of so away. Or even a whole metre.)