The Quarry was Iain Banks’ last novel before he died of cancer in June 2013. Iain Banks has always been an author I greatly admire, and whose novels – both literary and sci-fi – and non-fiction (Raw Spirit: In Search of the Perfect Dram) I practically lapped up in my enthusiasm for the peculiar worlds and characters he so deftly created. When picking up a Banks novel, I prepared myself for a mental marathon, since they were usually long and complex, and took a while to get into. I was expecting this when I picked up The Quarry. The narrator, Kit, is not yet of age: “very clever, if challenged in other ways…I am weird, strange, odd, socially disabled, forever looking at things from an unusual angle”.(Continue reading…)