Iain Banks: Still having fun and still a geek at heart

For the first 100 pages or so of Iain Banks’ latest novel not an awful lot happens.

In Stonemouth, the fictional town after which the book is named, there are rumours a member of one of its two controlling families may have been pushed off a suspension bridge. Elsewhere, there’s the odd hint why central character Stuart Gilmour, who is returning home for the first time in five years for a funeral, was driven out of town and there’s an uneasy truce which seems unlikely to last long.

Not that the lack of action matters. The pervading sense of doom which, like the coastal mist, hangs heavy on each chapter is enough to keep the pages turning.

“The idea of leaving and returning to the place you grew up in is something I know very well,” says Banks. “My father was in the Admiralty so we moved away from our little village in Queensferry when I was quite young. Later I went to Stirling for university and then London before finally moving back to the village where I had been born and where I live now. A lot of people have no problem staying in the place they grew up all their lives, but for the rest of us there is a need to get away, to leave the familiar behind and experience something new.

“Stonemouth is an amalgam of various places in Scotland. It’s partly Montrose, there’s a little bit of Greenock and an element of Fife. It’s basically every big town or small city you can think of.”

Stonemouth is part thriller, part love story and part an examination of what happens when friends move on. References to contemporary music set it very much in the now and while it’s a sure-fire way to make it dated five or 10 years hence, for Banks music has always been important. In the past he’s presented a show on BBC 6 Music and he’s previously released Personal Effects, a 20-track CD of some of his favourite songs from Radiohead to The Waterboys.

“For me any story has to be anchored in a specific time and place and music really helps to do that,” he says. “You often link certain events or times in your life with specific pieces of music. Of course when I include a mention of Plan B’s Defamation of Strickland Banks I’m aware that someone picking up the book years down the line may have no idea who is, but to me it doesn’t matter. I’ve never bought into the argument that fiction should be timeless.”

Stonemouth is Banks’ 14th mainstream novel and it’s now just over 25 years since his first, The Wasp Factory catapulted him from obscurity. Written from the point of view of 16-year-old Frank Cauldhame who, it transpires, has been responsible for the death of three young children and his family, the final twist ensured it became a massive word-of-mouth success. A quarter of a century on, it remains the book that Banks is still best-known for. “It’s something I’m still very proud of,” he says. “I remember saying to my friends that The Wasp Factory was the most commercial book I was probably ever going to write and it turned out I was right. That book meant I could fulfil my dream of just being a writer and it would be a little churlish if I felt it had cast some terrible shadow over my career.” Alongside his mainstream fiction, Banks has also published a series of equally successful science fiction books under the name Iain M Banks. He tends to alternate between the two genres and with The Hydrogen Sonata due out in October, he admits he does occasionally have to remember to swap hats.

“There’s something very liberating about science fiction. It allows you to throw all the normal constraints of human life out of the window. When you’re describing spaceships and extra-terrestrial monsters, no one can say, ‘I’m sorry, Mr Banks, I really don’t think they would look like that’. The truth is that I’m really a nerd at heart and the science fiction books allow me to indulge that side of me. It’s a lot easier to keep hammering the keyboard when you’re writing about complete fantasy.”

Now 58, Banks is showing no signs of slowing up. Recently, he’s been producing a book a year, which has partly been in response to publishers reducing their advances, but also because he’s never yet been short of ideas. “I used to have a note pad which I’d jot ideas down as they came to me,” he says. “But now I tend to use my phone. A book a year might sound like hard work, but it’s all relative isn’t it? Writing is like most things, the more you do it, the better you get at it. There’s a section in Stonemouth set at a wedding reception and I’ll admit that I probably devoted more pages than I should have to it. But I was having fun and if you’re having fun, I tend to think that you write better stories.”

An Evening with Iain Banks will take place at The Keys in Huddersfield on April 27, from 6.30-9pm. Tickets, which include a two course meal, cost £22.50 and can be booked on 01484 516677. or online at www.iainbanks.eventbrite.co.uk

Stonemouth, published by Little, Brown, priced £18.99 is out now.