Stonemouth A Novel

Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth, Scotland.

After five years in exile, his presence is required at the funeral of local patriarch Joe Murston, even though the last time Stewart saw the Murstons he was running for his life. 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 sea fog, gangsters, cheap drugs, and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides.

As he steps back into the minefield of his past to confront his guilt and all that it has lost him, Stewart uncovers ever darker stories, and his homecoming takes a more lethal turn than even he had anticipated. Tough, funny, fast-paced, and touching, renowned storyteller Iain Banks poignantly evokes adolescence, love, brotherhood, and vengeance in a rite-of-passage novel unlike any other.

"The flower of Scotland's more than a wee bit wilted from drink and recreational drugs in this violent, funny, coming-of-age explosion.

"Brilliant, irresistible, compelling." The New York Times

"Macabre and quite impossible to put down." The Financial Times

"The most imaginative novelist of his generation." The TImes (London)

"The flower of Scotland's more than a wee bit wilted from drink and recreational drugs in this violent, funny, coming-of-age explosion.

Spare and swift and and barrels toward a satisfyingly thrilling conclusion. Distils Banks's manifold talents into an entertaining confection. --

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. 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. 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, whose novels have been published in over thirty languages,