Tag Archives: Iain Banks

Great Opening Paragraph 142… ‘The Crow Road’ #amreading #FirstPara

Leave a reply

“It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach’s Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach.”
Iain BanksFrom ‘The Crow Road’ by Iain Banks

Here’s my review of THE QUARRY by Iain Banks.

Try one of these 1st paras & discover a new author:-
‘Middlesex’ by Jeffery Eugenides 
‘Super-Cannes’ by JG Ballard 
American Psycho’ by Brett Easton Ellis 

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#FirstPara THE CROW ROAD by Iain Banks #books #amreading https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-7gH via @SandraDanby

#BookReview ‘The Quarry’ by Iain Banks #contemporary #death

1 Reply

I started reading The Quarry with my emotions running high, knowing Iain Banks had completed it so near to death. But I determined to be fair, not to like it just because he died. But I did like it. A lot. The story is full of imagery: the quarry, the actual hole in the ground is the unknown faced by the two key characters: Guy, who is facing death; and his son Kit, who faces life without his father. Both stand on the edge of emptiness. Iain BanksKit is the key narrator. Described as ‘a bit odd’ and ‘socially disabled’, I liked him straight away. As often with a young narrator, the author puts words of wisdom into the words of an innocent. Perhaps Kit has more self-awareness than his elders. He is certainly an innocent who is learning quickly. The action takes place over one weekend, the limited timespan and setting in the house and edge of quarry give it the feeling of a stage play at times.
A group of friends gathers at Guy’s house, to spend time with him as he dies. But there is always a feeling that the adults want something from Kit, that no-one is being honest , that they are looking for something. This leads Kit into the quarry, the brooding threat there all the time outside the house. As they wonder whether the hole of the quarry stretches beneath the house’s foundations, and if the house will fall into it, we learn about Kit’s disputed identity. Who is his mother? The assumptions he made as a child are now being challenged, the certainty of his childhood is dug from beneath his feet just as the rock in the quarry has been extracted.
It’s impossible to read Guy’s bitterness about his own mortality and not think of Banks’s illness. But this is a tightly-written novel that I defy anyone coming to it not knowing the author to guess that the author was dying. There was only one scene where the editor’s hand was needed, Kit’s climb down into the quarry does go on a bit. But this is a minor gripe.
A fitting finale to an illustrious bibliography.

If you like this, try:-
‘Etta and Otto and Russell and James’ by Emma Hooper
‘The Last Days of Rabbit Hayes’ by Anna McPartlin
‘Blow Your House Down’ by Pat Barker

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
#BookReview THE QUARRY by Iain Banks https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-4b2 via @SandraDanby