Book of a lifetime: Weir of Hermiston by Robert Louis Stevenson

From The Independent archive: Russell Hoban on the Scottish author’s last (unfinished) novel

Stevenson circa 1880; the writer died aged just 44 (Getty)

Pity, and at the same time a bewildered fear of this explosive engine in his arms, whose works he did not understand, and yet had been tampering with.” Explosive engine indeed! This is what Archie Weir feels on attempting to part with young Kirstie Elliot. They love each other passionately but Archie’s father, Lord-Justice Clerk of Edinburgh, will never allow them to marry. And at this point in the story, Robert Louis Stevenson most inconsiderately died, leaving the work unfinished and the reader hanging.

Archie’s father is Adam Weir, a judge who enjoys sending men to be hanged. Earlier in his career he married plain Jean Rutherford, regarded by all and sundry as old-maid material. Beauty meant nothing to him; he chose her because she looked as if she’d be obedient. She was certainly that, but blood is thicker than small beer and she came of a race of drinkers and brawlers who flouted laws and conventions alike.