I've just recently
finished reading The Quarry by Iain
Banks, his last novel. I put off reading it for a while because I assumed that
it would be quite upsetting for me to read, knowing that the story was about a
man dying of cancer, written by a man who has recently died of cancer. And not
just any man, but someone who was, to me at least, a literary hero. Many
authors I love were long since dead before I had even heard of them, so it was
nice to have an author who was still about and still writing, although many of
his recent books, whilst still saying something interesting about the human
condition, did not reach the awesome heights of The Crow Road, Complicity or
The Wasp Factory for me. Having said
that, The Quarry, is, in my opinion, his
best book for a while, which just makes it all the more bittersweet that it was
his last. The aspect of the novel that struck me the deepest, apart from the
‘facing your own mortality’ facet, was the complex nature of the feelings that
the character who was dying, Guy, had towards his old friends. The way he
moaned at and about his friends, his frustration towards them combined with a
sense of belonging and nostalgia, was very familiar to me. It felt like a very
honest account of what it truly is to love a friend. Because I do get
frustrated with my friends, hurt by them, I feel in reaction to their choices
as though those choices they were my own. I find it hard to be measured and
rational in response to their actions because I’m utterly emotionally invested
in them. I hold them to same high standard that I fail to live up to myself.
This is not because I see my friends as useless, it is because, to me, they are
awesome, and yet they often don’t seem to realise it. They have all this
potential and intelligence and ability, and I want them to reach for the stars,
and that is why I get frustrated when they underestimate themselves.
