Shop Ireland

Walking on Glass by: Iain Banks

Click to tell a friend about this item...

More Product Details...

Review Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 Next »

Click here to add a review!

Average rating -

Rating: - A Bloody good read

I first read this book some years ago in my early teens. When I saw it appear on Amazon one day. I had to buy it to read again. Fantastic ! An absolutley great first Novel by Mr. Banks. Although some of his later works are not to my taste, The wasp factory, walking on Glass and Complicity are classics.
Obsessive, Bloody, Crass, Perverse, The horrifyingly portrayed story of this young character and his family and surroundings make this a compulsive read.
I had quite forgotten how good Early Banks really is. Read it !

Rating: - A disappointing failure

This appears to be a "love it or hate it" book...

"Walking on Glass" is a strange novel, its narrative broken into three strands. The first follows a somewhat pathetic man (Graham) who is besotted with a woman (Sarah). Graham understands that Sarah has a leather-clad motorcyclist lover, whose bike he often sees outside her house and around London, and yet he still pursues the object of his desires. The second story introduces us to Stephen Grout, clearly slightly mad and convinced that "they" (whoever "they" may be) are out to get him and that he is being attacked by somebody with a "microwave gun", which is why he often sweats when under stress. Finally, the third story is a fantasy of sorts, set in a castle with ceilings made of fish tanks, inside which huge luminous fish swim, providing all necessary light. The protagonist here (Quiss) is forced to play bizarre games (dominoes without spots, for example) and answer a seemingly impossible riddle. In the end the stories sort of come together. Sort of.

There is one fundamental problem with the book, which is that none of the stories are particularly interesting. The chapters revolve in threes, so we have a Graham chapter, then a Grout, then a Quiss, then back to Graham... but with the exception of the Quiss sections (which Banks clearly enjoyed writing the most, which probably explains why they are so much longer than the others) the chapters are all very short. Sadly, the much-trumpeted coming together of the three strands is perfunctory at best, almost done as an afterthought, and the "shock" revelation at the end of one of the storylines is more of an attempt to be controversial than anything, and it fails.

A big disappointment.

Rating: - Walking on Glass

Walking on Glass is as underrated as it is brilliant. Iain Bank's enigmatic novel of artifice and the inherent failings of humanity has often left readers bemused and frustrated. This reviewer has little more to offer in terms of unlocking the complexities of this awesome book, save that part of Bank's brilliance is the way he never patronises his reader; choosing to tell his tale and allowing the books pervading theme of ambiguity to transcend from page to person.

It would be easy to dismiss Walking on Glass as three separate stories that are destined to collide, but in doing so one would negate the true symbiotic and symbolic facets that flow through the narrative.

Graham Park is a young man in love with Sarah ffinch, a mysterious, aloof woman he meets at a party. As he walks to meet her at her flat the story charts how Park met Sarah. And studies his growing, yet doomed, expectation.

The second character is Steven Grout a man with supposed delusions that he is trapped in a world that is not his, tormented by an enemy determined to keep him there.

And finally there is Quiss, a prisoner in a ramshackle castle; forced to fathom the rules to board games to win the right to answer the ultimate conundrum and set himself free.

Walking on Glass is a story of manipulation and isolation. It is a tale that challenges and teases human frailty; its characters trapped by their own sense of perplexity and weakness. Readers may find the lack of resolution unsettling, yet they will forever consider this a small price to pay for such an exhilarating read.

Superb!

Rating: - What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

I decided to take the "morning-after-the-night-before" approach with this review, generally because I thought, having slept on it, I would gain some clarity on this book. I have, and, well I haven't...

The book is basically split into three parts. The first story is based around a second-year art student called Graham. Introduced to a girl called Sara at a party, he falls in love with her. The rest of his story seems to focus upon the next six months of their rather "shaky" relationship, leading up to the typical (i.e. shocking) Banksian climax. The second story revolves around Steven Grout, a man who is deeply paranoid and feels that everyone is out to get him. Thirdly, we have the Kafkaesque story of Quiss, an old man, trapped in a castle, forced to play impossible games for the chance to solve a riddle and therefore win his freedom.

I came to this book off the back of "The Wasp Factory" and "Complicity", two books which I enjoyed immensely precisely because we can relate to the characters in the story. Although in both of these books, the twists are shocking, to some extent at least, they are justifiable given what has come before. I won't spoil "Walking on Glass" for those of you who haven't read it but the sexual twist at the end of Graham's story will leave you feeling a bit cheated. I suspect (as other reviewers have pointed out before me) that a second reading would help you see the clues that reveal how Graham's story ended, but that doesn't detract from the fact it was done for shock value, something we have seen performed much more effectively in his other books.

For those of you who have seen "Wes Craven's New Nightmare" (the last of the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise) you will see the somewhat existentialistic ending of Quiss' story coming a mile off. For those of you who expect there to be a climatic collision between the three stories at the end of the book, you will be disappointed - blink, and you will miss the connection between the three. For those of you wanting some sort of closure in a book, look elsewhere, this story inevitably leaves you with far more questions than answers.

Rating: - Bewildering but beguiling

In truth this isn't so much a novel, but a trio of short stories that kind of come together at the end and some of the stories are more appealing and easier to digest than others. In truth, the story of the game players in the glass prison left me bewildered at times, but I kept chugging along thanks to the humour and intrigue. The other stories were easier going but maybe not as engaging.

I finished this book feeling a bit let down but impressed nonetheless by the quality of the writing. I'd say it possibly the most intellectual Iain Banks book I've read so far, but that doesn't make it the best. Worth a read, but not the best starting point for people new to Iain Banks as I suspect it would put many off from reading his other (and better, in my opinion) books. I think it would have to be a very generous person to give this book anything more than three stars.

Review Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 Next »