Iain began writing THE QUARRY in January 2013.
As ever, the book is conceived and plotted through the previous year.
Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, on a spectrum that stretches from 'highly gifted' at one end to 'nutter' at the other.
At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry in the Pennines. His mother’s identity is another matter. Now, though, his father’s dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time.
‘Uncle’ Paul’s a media lawyer; Rob and Ali are upwardly mobile corporate bunnies; pretty, hopeful Pris is a single mother; Haze is still living up to his drug-inspired name, twenty years on; and fierce, protective Hol is a gifted if acerbic critic.
As young film students they all lived at Willoughtree House with Guy, and they've all come back because they want something. Kit, too, has ulterior motives. Before his father dies he wants to know who his mother is, and what's on the mysterious tape they're all looking for. But most of all he wants to stop time and keep his father alive.
Iain told Stuart Kelly in his final interview for The Guardian, “I thought everything was hunky dory except I had a sore back and my skin looked a bit funny. [On March 4th I was sent for a CT Scan and] by the evening of the 4th I'd been told I had only a few months to live. By that time I'd written 90% of the novel; 87,000 words out of 97,000. Luckily, even though I'd done my words for the day, I'd taken a laptop into the hospital in Kirkcaldy, and once I'd been given the prognosis, I wrote the bit where Guy says, 'I shall not be disappointed to leave all you bastards behind.' It was an exaggeration of what I was feeling, but it was me thinking: 'How can I use this to positive effect?' because I was feeling a bit kicked in the guts at this point. So I thought, 'OK, I'll just give Guy a good old rant.' Like I say; that's reality for you, it can get away with anything."
Although the publication date is brought forward, both his advance copy and the general release come after Iain’s death on June 9th, 2013.
Journalist Tom Chivers remarked that we have lost “two of our finest writers.”
In one of his blog posts, Tom wrote: “There are many reasons to revere Banks and to miss him. His writing was clear and sharp and funny; his imagination was electric; his ideas were both profound and simple.
“His relationship with death was expounded years ago, in The Crow Road: “We continue in our children, and in our works and in the memories of others; we continue in our dust and ash. To want more was not just childish, but cowardly.”
“He was, by all accounts, a loving and kind man. But his self-mockery, his refusal to take himself or anything else – even death – too seriously, is a mark of the man. I’d love to end on a suitably self-deprecating note myself, but I just couldn’t do it as well as he could.”
Martin Belk established a website, Banksophilia, where thousands of fans sent messages of thanks, appreciation and support. Iain read as many of them as time allowed. It sounds trite to say he was deeply moved, but he was. Facing the end of his life, it was extraordinary, beautiful and comforting to see him understand the impact he had made and the legacy he would leave.
Memory Banks - The Banksophilia Archive