Book description
Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile his
presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even
though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life,
staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary
town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five mile beach, can be
beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little
more than seafog, gangsters, cheap drugs and a suspension bridge
irresistible to suicides. And although there's supposed to be a
temporary truce between Stewart and the town's biggest crime family,
it's soon clear that only Stewart is taking this promise of peace
seriously. Before long a quick drop into the cold grey Stoun begins to
look like the soft option, and as he steps back into the minefield of
his past to confront his guilt and all that it has lost him, Stu
uncovers ever darker stories, and his homecoming takes a more lethal
turn than even he had anticipated. Tough, funny, fast-paced and
touching, Stonemouth cracks open adolescence, love, brotherhood and
vengeance in a rite of passage novel like no other. Iain Banks came to
widespread and controversial public notice with the publication of his
first novel, The Wasp Factory, in 1984. He has since gained enormous
popular and critical acclaim for both his mainstream and his science
fiction novels.
