Published: 2012
Let’s get one thing out of the way straight off the bat – I’m a massive fan of this guy. And by massive, I mean annoyingly-evangelical-whilst-drunk, I-wish-I-could-be-just-like-him massive. If I ever actually meet him, there’s a fair chance that I would swoon and pass out, in much the way that women are once popularly supposed to have done in stressful situations. That said, the hugest fans can often be the harshest critics, exacting unreasonable levels of expectation on the objects of their admiration. As Shakespeare’s play-writing career matured, he was in all probability dogged by a cynical portion of his fan base, muttering things like ‘hmm, this Othello thing, it’s alright I suppose, but it’s no Titus Andronicus’.
Anyway, the eagerness with which I first sat down with Banks’s latest novel, Stonemouth, was tempered by the knowledge that he hasn’t always been up to the mark of late, with the warmed over Crow Road re-hash, The Steep Approach to Garbadale (2007), and the deeply disappointing Transition (2009). With thirteen 'literary' novels under his belt (as well as his sci-fi works, published as Iain M. Banks) I was beginning to worry that the star of the man once described as the most imaginative author of his generation was on the wane. Ominously, Stonemouth was also supposed to cover some familiar themes (young male protagonist, family-based intrigue, provincial Scottish life) which invites comparisons with his best loved works such as The Crow Road. I needn’t have worried: this time, the prolific Scotsman has produced an energetic, tightly-written, engaging story that plays on his strengths without being derivative of what has gone before.
Twenty-something Stewart Gilmour is returning to his hometown, the remote and parochial Scottish port of Stonemouth, with well-warranted reluctance. The book opens with his arrival into town, in typically grim weather on a landmark suspension bridge. The bridge is notorious locally for its irresistibility to suicides, possibly helped on their way by the forces of Stonemouth’s crime barons, the Murston family. For Stewart, this is his first time back home in five years, and it’s clear that Stonemouth holds little for him other than perpetual mist (‘haar’), inexpensive recreational drugs and one or two old friends. And enemies – it’s the Murston family who were responsible for his exile in the first place. It is for the funeral of the Murston patriarch, Joe, that Stewart is home – and that is only under special and temporary dispensation from the powers that be.
The novel is set over the course of one weekend, during which we discover the events leading up to Stewart having to skip town in the first place via a series of reunions with old friends, as well as encounters of the less friendly variety. It turns out he was formerly engaged to the daughter of the Murston family – evidently not the best people to get on the wrong side of, which he has managed via an ill-advised indiscretion (yes, that sort). Along the way we encounter a selection of endearing, amusing, and threatening characters (a confrontation in a pool hall is particularly tense and plausible).
Banks’s politics are less evident here than in some of his other novels, but this is not necessarily a bad thing (using his main character to channel his opinions on American foreign policy in The Steep Approach, much as I may agree with them, was a distraction for example). And there is at least a genuinely satisfying aphorism offered up by the late Joe Murston on the nature of left and right wing folk towards the end.
Speaking of which, a mostly rewarding conclusion is reached, even if some loose ends are left frustratingly untied, like the untimely (and deeply suspicious) death of Callum, one of the younger of the Murston clan, as well as some details regarding the events of Stewart’s own downfall.
Whilst neither as expansive or as imaginative as the multifaceted rambling family saga of Banks’ most enduring novel, The Crow Road, Stonemouth does bear many of the most enjoyable hallmarks of this author, from genuinely traumatic teenage memories, to humour, intrigue and pathos, as well as a genuine feeling that the central character has changed along the way. With all of this going for it, Stonemouth is, to coin a phrase, the most, well, ‘Banksian’ of recent Banks novels.
