memory banks

Just a couple of quickies in the wake (geddit?) of my post on the death of Iain Banks:

• firstly, this appears to be the last interview he gave before his death
• and here is a Guardian review of his last novel, The Quarry

One thing that links the two is that they (as I did) attempt to nominate some best Banks novels, and both come up with Use Of Weapons, the third Culture novel, as the pinnacle of the series. Banks himself seems to rate it as his favourite (along with The Bridge of the non-SF ones), and the guy reviewing The Quarry evidently feels the same way. For what it's worth, I disagree; I think Use Of Weapons is fine, but its overly tricksy structure and the big plot twist revealed at the end betray its origins as something Banks wrote when he was about 20 and then re-jigged for publication much later. The frantic throwing of the kitchen sink at it stylistically betrays a slight lack of confidence in the material, I think, and the simple linear storytelling of something like Inversions is much more impressive. But, you know, they're all good.