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Eighteen-year-old Kit is weird: big, strange, odd, socially disabled, on a spectrum that stretches from "highly gifted" at one end, to "nutter" at the other. At least Kit knows who his father is; he and Guy live together in a decaying country house on the unstable brink of a vast quarry. His mother´s identity is another matter. Now, though, his father´s dying, and old friends are gathering for one last time.
"Uncle" Paul´s a media lawyer now; Rob and Ali are upwardly mobile corporate bunnies; pretty, hopeful Pris is a single mother; Haze is still living up to his drug-inspired name twenty years on; and fierce, protective Hol is a gifted if acerbic critic. As young film students they lived at Willoughtree House with Guy, and they´ve all come back because they want something. Kit, too, has his own ulterior motives. Before his father dies he wants to know who his mother is, and what´s on the mysterious tape they´re all looking for. But most of all he wants to stop time and keep his father alive.
Fast-paced, gripping and savagely funny, "The Quarry" is a virtuoso performance whose soaring riffs on the inexhaustible marvel of human perception and rage against the dying of the light will stand among Iain Banks´ greatest work.

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