Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are...Stonemouth by Iain Banks.

What if you were not the main character even in your own story?  The tyranny of the first person narrative in a novel always creates problems for the author.   In his last ever novel (sadly) The Quarry Banks used the voice of a teenage autistic adult.  Although the tone was quirky yet precise there was no question that the story in a sense centred around him because of the care he required.  Yet in general the first person approach is very risky as everything is seen through his or her eyes.

This was the main theme I took from reading Stonemouth - on the face of it a fairly slight addition to the wealth of Iain Banks' collected works (fiction and science fiction).  For the narrator here (throughout) is  a mid 20 year old young Scotsman  Stewart Gilmour- around 30 years old younger than the author- establishing himself in the adult world but in many regards still a naif. The book is timebound and covers a three day period  (albeit with fairly lengthy and quite cinematic flashbacks)when Stewart returns to his hometown which gives the book its name in the North East of Scotland for a funeral.

The funeral is of a patriarch of one of the two criminal families(the Murstons) in the small town and it marks the first return for Gilmour to the town for five years.  But this is no welcoming return for the Fisher King knight following his quests and adventures across the world.  The exile was imposed on Stewart as he cheated on his fiance the week before his wedding with a brief sexual liason in the toilets.  The problem being his bride to be was the daughter of the Murston clan  (Ellie)and his paramour in the cubicle was the daughter of the rival clan.

Ellie has a lot of brothers so as Stewart returns to the scene of the crime with a little (not much) more maturity there are lots of masculine confrontations over the weekend.  And of course he sees Ellie for the first time in 5 years - will they reconcile? And she has a little (prettier- working as a model) sister who has always caused mischief. So far so meh...

The triviality of these issues - a couple getting engaged far too young  then breaking up because of the silliness of one of them - is not helped by Stewart's voice which is also young and gauche.  He is a talented art school graduate who is surfing the neo-liberal globalised world as a "lighting consultant" to the world's uber rich.  Yet he shows no real awareness of this.  In fact unusually for Banks there is no clear political context of the book.  Even other fiction of his which are family sagas (the Crow Road - which this seems a dim future echo of- or the Steep Road to Garbadale) make some significant comment on the times in which they were set.

Maybe that's the point Stewart Gilmour is of the time - mid 20s in the late 2000s born in the 80s - no real political compass, no musical or artistic references (again something Banks uses in most of his work) - obsessed with his mobile phone.  But it does mean the work itself runs the risk of being all those things as Stewart is the narrator's voice to accompany us through these few days.

And yet and yet there seems like there is something more to this book.  The warring families,links with the Glasgow criminal underworld the unexplained death of one of the Murston boys, a bridge that acts as a magnet for suicide dominating the town's architecture.  In another writer's hands this could have been a very different (much worse) work - a study of the Tartan Mafia, family feuds - a pot boiler of crime fiction which seem to dominate the book shop shelves and the TV channels (funnily enough this has been made into a BBC drama which I haven't seen -starring inevitably Peter Mullan as the ganglord).

Stewart seems a pawn in all of that of which he only very latterly becomes aware.  He is off stage for all of those developments but in male egoist fashion puts himself at the centre.  I was reminded a bit of a couple of scenes from the first Austin Power movie where anonymous henchmen who are killed are given backstories.  This is funny because heroic narrative only really allows one perspective.

Thus the everyday love story of Gilmour with Ellie is focused on - as all romantic love is ultimately personal - whereas the drivers of the "plot" happen elsewhere.  This all sort of comes together by the end in quite a shocking way - as does Stewart's lack of awareness - but the naive narrative of the 20 something  itself always seems on the edges,
A telling quote from the book I think comes from Ellie's sister over his self created conspiracy theory that he was maybe set up to be caught in the toilet (aye right!) "Maybe it had nothing to do with you at all Stewart? Maybe you were just collateral damage? Maybe you were just used?"

Perhaps I am reading too much (geddit!) into the work which flows pretty smoothly and could pass over you in an enjoyable way with no lasting impact.  It is difficult for me to say that this will be the last Banks I ever read because I have completed all the other works and he is no longer on this planet.  But I think he was hinting at these ideas as he has explored the issue of solipsism in fiction in other works - notably Transition.

Of course there are some beautifully written scenes - in particular outlining a traumatic childhood incident (although this again seems a little bit beside the point)- and the art of having a consistent voice is skilful.  Banks at this point has been writing for over 30 years. The geographical sense of the North East is also well done as his eye for detail - the gangster recovering from his Disco Wii session sticks in the mind!

So this work provoked some thoughts in me on the nature of narrative and character.  But overall a simple coda to an impressive body of work.

Goodbye, My Friend: The Quarry - Iain Banks

Some books are beyond review.  Their iconic status means they become elevated from the normal rules of criticism.  Forever, "The Quarry" by Iain Banks will be remembered.  Not because of its writing style, plot or characterisation but because it was his final work before he died far far too early of cancer.  In fact it came out two weeks after his death.

This status is enhanced by the coincidence (apparently) that one of the main characters (the generically named Guy) of the work is himself dying of cancer.  The book focuses on one of the last weekends of his life where his pals from University gather together for a reunion.  A painful problem for the work is that as the ex-film students watch their friend's death unfolding so do Iain Banks readers.  A poignancy enhanced by the close relationship many of Banks' readers (and I would include myself in this) have with his work.  As a result of this I think many Banks devotees will genuinely struggle with it particularly towards the end.   

So now to attempt the impossible: how is it?  The truth is that I think the work is fairly slight.  That it was written and completed at all I guess is the wonder of it.  An immediate and constant problem for me is the authorial voice.  It takes the original (and structurally difficult) approach of having a first person narrator throughout - Kit: the 18 year old son of Guy - an autistic young man.   Using someone with a different way of looking at the world is not original - Faulkner's  "The Sound and Fury" and more recently the The Curious Incident of the Dog at Night - Time - (specifically an Autistic child).  This unreliable/reliable narrator has some advantages - it works well for humour as the deadpan approach of someone on the spectrum undercuts some of the more over the top statements of the other characters.

The problem is that the constant prose style has a clipped sparse tone - exactly like a teenage autistic would have.   In some ways (and interestingly) it is a bit like Ernest Hemingway who uses this style throughout all his fiction, I don't know what this says!  One tone throughout a novel is a difficulty though and means the work necessarily short as it runs out of places to go.   I also wonder given his illness whether it was easier for Banks to write like this - there is no need for extensive description or developed language.  When suffering from a particularly nasty painful disease  I can see the advantage of this.

The gathering takes place over a weekend in Guy and Kit's rundown Victorian pile overlooking the titular Quarry - the ambiguity of the word is used throughout and perhaps obviously as Moz put it "You are The Quarry".   The owners of the quarry want to buy the house to enlarge their working space - this is quite a powerful aspect of the book the relentless encroachment of the millennia old rocks like the coming of death to us all.  There is a prolonged scenes in the bowels of the quarry

I saw a Will Self talk at the book festival of the literary theories that there are only several ur-texts  from which all novels are derived.  One of these is the Fisher King - the quest saga: searching for the Holy Grail.   Quarry is focused on a search the Uni friends (all holding very 2010s jobs - meaningless management consultant roles, film critic, career and machine politician) want to use their time together to find a film they made together at uni which they want destroyed. It is/was  (as everyone and even Kit suspects) their attempt at porn.  Tied with this quest is  Kit's search for his mother who Guy has never revealed and could be one of the three female friends - including the one to which Kit is closest and also attracted to Hol (the critic).  

There are two pieces in the work that Banks can only get away with I think because of the nature of the  narrator - a scene where there is a literal list of films that Hol has recommended - very male.  There is also an unwise and overlong description of a role playing video game (is that what they still call them) that Kit is a recognised world expert at.  Again very stilted and reflective of Banks' own obsessions.  

The list of movies underlined to me the similarities of certain films to this work - the Oxbridge Fry/Laurie/Thompson (and Branagh directed) early 90s "Peter's Friends" and the 80s US "The Big Chill".  Like these works there are unresolved tensions, sexual, jealousy that all bubble up to a big confrontation on the last night together.  Some things are resolved and revealed, some aren't and Guy dies eventually.  

The relationship between the group is one of the strengths of the work - particularly viewed by Kit the outsider.  However although the characters do stand up on their own right Banks does fall prey to something he has done throughout his work - not really disguising his own voice through rants - Guy on "fighting" cancer (an excellent monologue in terms of content) and Hol provides the outlet against the current political system.

It is testimony to Banks' first rate skills as a writer that he pulled all this together and made it readable and fun in places.  For all its flaws it slips down as easily as one of the Islay malts that Iain Banks adored.  But on reflection I don't think it will stand as one of his strongest works - although I think it is as representative of our coalition austerity time of 2014 as any other fiction I have read. So it may have historical significance even beyond Banks.  His last Science Fiction work - also a wistful study of mortality has more to recommend it.

But as I said none of that really matters.  This is the last book Iain Banks will ever write.  And I will miss him.  That is the real legacy of this book.

Sad Reflections on life and politics: Iain Banks' Interview with the Scottish Socialist Voice from November 2002.

The desperate news that ground-breaking Scottish writer and all round excellent guy Iain Banks has only a few months to live inevitably leads to some reflection on mortality and time.  I reflected that I had been a fan of Iain Banks since I was a 15 year old at high school (and banned from writing a book review of the Wasp Factory!) when he was a very new writer.  In a sense I grew up with his writing (sci-fi and mainstream) an integrated thread of my own developments up and down in my life.  Banks is an incredibly prolific writer so since the 80s has more or less produced a book a year or 18 months or so.

Another quiet memory was an interview I did with him for the Scottish Socialist Voice which I managed to dig up from computer -  I can't find it online although I do have a hard copy.  It was in 2002 only a decade ago but politically for the Scottish Left it is a geological age.  The optimism of the (relatively) new SSP and the Scottish Parliament is here as is the growing movement against war criminal Blair which would result in the massive anti-war demonstrations a couple of months later.  Banks' latest book at the time was Dead Air - a direct response to the 11th September bombings.

Reflections on life led to me thinking about how sad the political position we are in now in when you read this.  In many ways the period of this interview was the time when the SSP was at its strongest attracting the support of all sections of Scottish society including the cultural wing, involved in the anti-war movement and industrial action (the firefighters were beginning a serious campaign of industrial action, left unity however precarious (the SWP were involved after all) seemed a reality not blind wishful thinking.  Again a few months later the SSP gained 128,000 votes and 6 MSPs.

Now that seems as remote as one of the colourful planets that Iain (M) Banks writes about.  The Scottish Left is generally a wasteground, the SSP disintegrated in the aftermath of 2 court cases  and things have been thrown back many years to way before 2002.  Personally I gave up my membership in 2011 after the Parly elections as the SSP struggled to cope with the post-court case (2010 model) terrain.  

As Banks says here: " the point is not - and never - to give up hope". There are some good signs : the Radical Independence Convention, the anti-bedroom tax demos.  But things are so much more complicated and patchy because there is no coherent left force in Scotland.  For a time there was though and Iain Banks was part of it.  Hopefully as he faces his next few months that will be a positive thought for him.  

He also turned me on to an Orchestra Baobab album which is still one of my favourites!

Iain Banks is one of Scotland’s most successful fiction writers.  Dead Air, published a few months ago is his twelfth novel.  He has also internationally popular with his science fiction work where he has written  nine novels and created his own utopian society: the Culture. He is also, perhaps, the most famous subscriber to the Scottish Socialist Voice!  He gave his views on books, music, the world and politics to Nick McKerrell.

Dead Air seems to have caused a bit of a controversy touching as it does on  the events around September 11.  Did this surprise you?

Not really. Actually I was hoping it would stir things up a bit. A bit more, even (instead of dealing with the issues the book tried to raise, people seemed generally fixated on the fact the first draft was "written" in six weeks - it's true it was typed out in six weeks, however I'd mostly written the book in my head over the three or so months previously).

A lot of your recent mainstream novels seem to deal with a lot of topical issues is this your preferred setting?

I like the freedom of being able to write from a Science Fictional point of view, where you can deal with issues on any scale at all, but I do enjoy writing about the here and now too, because, well, that's where we all live, while still keeping the option of veering off into fantasy or magical realism or whatever, should the notion take me.

The main protagonist in Dead Air is a shock left-wing DJ  who lets rip at various points with his comments on America, the world and everything.   Did you use this to vent your spleen on the  way the world is going?

Definitely. Usually I allow myself just one obvious rant per book, but with this one I decided to make the rants more centre stage. I think since Dubya's non-election and the rightwards slide of New Labour (tm) there seems to be more to rant about.

On that theme  how do you think the world is going?

Badly, just now. The Right has been in the ascendancy since the early Eighties and has done its damnedest to persuade everybody that its way is the only way, but some of the chickens are starting to come home to roost now (the word "Enron" springs to mind, for some reason) and the point is not - and never - to give up hope. Capitalism has had it all its own way since about 1990 and the world is a demonstrably less fair, just and equitable place; alternative ways of running society need to be explored and I think more and more people are open to that idea.

How do you feel about the current warmongering of Bush and Blair?

I've never voted for New Labour and I don't consider myself a subject of the Crown, but I can't help feeling ashamed of what Blair is doing in my - our - name. What is being touted here is a war of naked imperialist aggression, an act of civilisational thuggery.

How do you think the Scottish Parliament has done in the last few years?

Not bad, so far. Not brilliant, certainly, but there have been some progressive measures (student fees, nursing care funding). The biggest scandal is the cost of the new Parliament building; were the planners/accountants from a military background? I thought only weapons systems cost eight times more than originally budgeted for.

What about the SSP?

Well, you get my vote, and I buy the paper... But stop fishing for compliments.

Would you call yourself a socialist?

I do if I bump into right-wing Americans (I don't know, there's just something about the sight of a wildly pulsing vein on the suddenly scarlet brow of a Republican-voting big-name SF author). But I'm rich*, so I'm not sure I'm really allowed to... (*This is rich in the compared-to-most-people sense, not in the Bill Gates or even Sir Paul McCartney sense.)

The Culture –Banks’s utopian universe– could be seen as a vision of a socialist society?

Yes, the Culture, which appears in most of the SF books, is socialist/communist/whateverist. There's no money, private property is synonymous with sentimental value, nothing and nobody is exploited and the opportunities for fun are pretty much unrestricted, so I like to think of it as a society that anybody could be happy in. Well, maybe not people of a determinedly miserablist nature, but they get to use really good, profoundly saturative VR, so even they're happy (relative term) too. Gee, all we need is too-cheap-to-ticket space travel and unlimited clean energy! What's stopping us?

Does it bother you that many people only read your fiction and don’t look at the sci-fi?

 Deeply. But, heck, it isn't compulsory.

Will your next book be science fiction?

 Yup. Though that's about all that even I know. It'll probably end up being a Culture story again because I just love writing about it and there's still a lot of stuff about the Culture I'd like to write about, however if I can think of a really spiffing non-Culture idea between now and this time next year when I have to start writing the blighter, I'll go with that instead (hint: I most likely won't).

How do you rate other Scottish writers?

Far too good. We're just a wee daft country; how DARE there be so many writers what are better than me. It's a disgrace. I may sue.

I know you’re a bit of a music fan.  What are you listening to at the moment?

 Red Hot Chilli Peppers: "By The Way". Or maybe Craig Armstrong: "As If To Nothing". 

Review of Iain Banks' Transition: Multi-versatile work

I don't know if you can accuse a writer of plagarising themselves. I suppose it is something that is never really mentioned it is normally discounted as a writer going over similar themes and ideas developed in slightly different ways. For example there is a criticism of Philip Roth's last few novels that he has engaged in this.

But when you write in two completely different persona as Iain Banks does (his science fiction is written by Iain M Banks) I suppose the p word becomes a possibility. Iain M Banks is the name adopted by Banks (his full one!) when writing his science fiction which he has done as long as his more traditional literary fiction.

It has long been a bug bear of mine (and apparently Banks) that readers who devour his work draw a line at his science fiction. This has even been the case, in my view, when in the last few years his strongest and most inventive work in terms of style, structure and character has been his SF. And given that a few of his more recent mainstream contemporay novels although OK have been treading water a bit - I'm thinking of the Road to Garbadale and the Business.

Banks has dealt with this now in a fairly obvious way now though by transposing a lot of the themes of his science fiction directly into this work. Not completely a first - he dabbled with this a bit I think with the Bridge one of his earlier novels - but never as full on as this.

Limited to Earth (or Calbafreques!) this is no space opera. Indeed the existence of alien life or humans making contact with them form an essential question of this work. Where the sci-fi comes in is the existence of an infinite number of planet Earths and humans within them. Ones where we died when we were 4 or had coffee rather than tea this morning or have blue hair or.... So for example one of the worlds has a problem with Christian Fundamentalist terrorists, this is quite well done but draws very much on Dawkins' God Delusion. This is an actual area of theoretical physics at the moment speculating over the nature of infinity and what it means for humans - but it is purely at that level - theory which makes it ripe for fictional treatment.

There are a group of individuals structured in a bureaucratic organisation - the Concern who can travel or transition across these multiple worlds and do so by entering other people's bodies. Familiar to anyone who has seen Terminator 2 or the early 90s tv show Quantum Leap, currently on just before the Tour de France! They intervene across the world ostensibly to do good; to prevent bad things happening but at the top of the organisation there is some foul work afoot with a hidden agenda or is there?

The debate over intervention whether helping an individual to benefit society or indeed killing many more individuals for the same reasons is dealt with here. This is a central theme of Banks' sci fi particularly with his utopian space communist society the Culture who have to interact with a variety of worlds. That is where I get the idea of plagarism - accusation is not really a fair word though because he deals with these themes really well here. I just think he has done it before and with a lot more detail in his sci-fi work. I think it is telling the Concern is also a 7 letter word beginning with C - although a more exclusively human form. It criticises the money-grabbing aspect of a version of Earth which looks very much like ours.

And I suppose that is the difference the Culture doesn't engage with the planet Earth - its scale is much vaster than that. There is I think just one short story where the two interact. In contrast this is very much a human story - exploring how we would deal with these theoretical themes.

In that there are strong characters this is done well - Mr Oh, a transitioner who is used by the Concern and comes to his own conclusions over what to do, although his awakening near the end is a bit too close to the Matrix conclusion for me, Mrs Mulverhill - his lover and mentor, the Philosopher (a torturer) and Adrian (a hedge fund manager (closer than you would think in job) are all interesting creations and all drawn into the Concern.

Sometimes there is a slight tendency to crowbar a theme around a character though - the torturer (philosopher) has a dialogue with another man who has tortured for a greater good which amounts to a text book discussion of Kantian autonomy of the individual versus utilitarianism. As outlined so well in Michael Sandel's recent series on Justice. It is worthy of discussion as many of the ideas are but breaks the narrative flow.

However where the work is excellent is the study of self - what it means to be a human. It explores the vanity we have as individuals - solipsism - which suggests we are the centre of the world, bad things wont happen to us - everything revolves around us. Very much a modern Western vanity which we all suffer from including most of the characters in the book especially Adrian who really personifies the pre-2008 crash mentality of capitalism. His end though is not particularly drawn up with events around Lehman Brothers which I thought it would be. I thought these philosphical themes and their discussion show Banks at his best which he normally reserves for his sci-fi.

It also is fairly experimental in narrative structure for one of his traditional novels. The multi-narration overlaps and is difficult to keep a handle on - I think this is quite brave and well done. It dives right in so the reader will have to work, cross reference and so on. This means the conclusion could be seen as a little convaluted - I am still trying to work out if I fully understand it.
The descriptions of other worlds - which are remember essentially this one where I am typing this - also takes no prisoners in their flowing and alien detail and I wonder how much his traditional literary readers enjoyed it. The book seems to have got great reviews from the blurb though this can sometimes be misleading - because I think it shows the link between contemporary issues and philosophy which Banks expounds much more in his science fiction; but Im not sure all readers will agree.

There is more in the book, perhaps too much some times, and it takes a while to get going because of the narrative style. Sometimes Banks could be more subtle - the first line whilst great is a bit undercutting of his own strength as a writer: "Apparently I am what is known as an Unreliable Narrator" It's like he doesn't have the confidence to leave this unstated and let the reader work it out - this narrative art being a central part of much of modern fiction.

My advice would be to stick with it for it says a lot about the nature of being human, sexual relations, materialism and alienation. There's even an inter-planet Earth chase culminating in a European tourist trap! A bit Bourne-esque. I liked this but I hope it doesn't reflect Banks draining the well of ideas from his sci-fi for his contemporary work or indeed vice versa.