Stonemouth

Starred review from September 10, 2012
The flower of Scotland’s more than a wee bit wilted from drink and recreational drugs in this violent, funny, coming-of-age explosion from veteran Scottish novelist Banks (The Crow Road) set in moderately affluent Stonemouth, near Aberdeen. Some noxious native weeds, like the Murstons, a local crime family, are threatening to choke off narrator Stewart Gilmour now that he’s returned after five years to pay his last respects to the clan’s departed patriarch, Joe. Stu also has unfinished business with Ellie Murston, the girl he loves but left at the altar after the disastrous, hilarious disclosure of his boozy, coked-up pre-marriage fling. Stunning descriptions of coastal Scotland alternate with the rain-soaked violence of Ellie’s brothers and Stu’s painful flashbacks to his youth. His memories help him understand that beneath the “flash-hate” he’s encountering, there’s “something hurt and pathetic and raging.” Banks ends by hopefully assuring us that even a land sapped by corrupt compromise and the “new orthodoxy” of materialism can bloom again. Agent: Kate Hibbert, Little, Brown U.K.

September 15, 2012
This novel considers the question of how to return home after a long absence, particularly when your ex-fiancee is the eldest daughter of a local crime boss. Should we pity Stewart Gilmour, the creative, successful, suicidally stupid narrator of Banks' novel? We first meet Stewart on a suspension bridge, a favorite for suicides, above the Firth of Stoun, just outside his hometown. Stewart is waiting for Powell Imrie, a former classmate and now chief heavy for the Murstons, a local crime family well-stocked with thick-necked sons ready to separate Stewart's head from his neck. He is back for the funeral of Joe Murston, the family patriarch with whom he was friendly. Permission granted conditionally, with the funeral on Monday, Stewart falls in and down with his old crowd, and waits, with little dignity intact and a splinter of hope, to clap eyes on Ellie Murston, his ex and the love of his life. The novel flashes back on a childhood one hesitates to call idyllic, and Stewart's reminisces are interrupted by thugs who, apparently, did not get or could not read the memo permitting him to visit unmolested. Bodie 'Ferg' Ferguson, the sort of friend one has if one does not need enemies, a bat-wingman, provides foulmouthed commentary and consumes quantities of the locally available anesthetics. Adept as an anesthesiologist, Banks adjusts the tension with short bursts of hilarity. Joe Murston is interred, the attendees repair to the Mearnside Hotel, the scene of Stewart's ignominy, and while a conspiracy may have cost him his future back then, present dangers might prove just as lethal. Including science fiction he has published as Iain M. Banks, this is Banks' (Surface Detail, 2011, etc.) 25th novel to appear in the States. Contemporary, hilarious, gritty--yes, this is genre fiction, and no, the genre doesn't get much better than this.

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October 15, 2012

Stewart Gilmour returns to his hometown of Stonemouth, Scotland, to pay his respects at the funeral of a local patriarch. What should be a simple visit has to be negotiated with one of the two local crime families, a family that Stewart was a week away from marrying into when he skipped town five years earlier. With a weekend to kill before the funeral, Stewart endangers himself by questioning the circumstances that forced him to leave in the first place. This novel begins with all the elements of a good noir: a protagonist in over his head, a moody setting, and an atmosphere of danger. But about midway through, the plot begins to meander, and instead of remaining a taunt thriller or mystery, the novel ends up more as a love story and a meditation on returning to one's childhood home. VERDICT Although well written, the story seems confused about what it wants to be. Banks's (The Wasp Factory) latest is mildly recommended for fans of gritty European fiction, but fans of crime fiction and noir will likely be disappointed. [Banks also writes speculative fiction as Iain M. Banks; his latest Culture novel publishes this month, see below.--Ed.]--Pete Petruski, Cumberland Cty. Lib. Syst., Carlisle, PA

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