Walking on Glass [Hardcover]

Iain Banks (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 7, 1985

Graham Park is in love. But Sara Fitch is an enigma to him, a creature of almost perverse mystery. Steven Grout is paranoid - and with justice. He knows that They are out to get him. They are. Quiss is forced to play impossible games. The solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Banks received rave reviews from critics in his native England and the U.S. for his debut in The Wasp Factory. His second novel is also an extraordinary feat, terrifying and baffling, going far beyond the bounds of fiction as it's usually defined. There are really three separate stories here. The first concerns nice young Londoner Graham Park, in love with Sara ffitch (sic), whom he meets through his gay friend, Slater. The latter's wild ideas provide needed comedy in an otherwise brooding atmosphere, as Graham worries over whether he can win the mysterious Sara from her biker boyfriend. The next story tells of Steven Grout, a laborer who can't keep a job because of his disruptive temper. The paranoid Steven believes "They" are out to get him via lethal microwaves. The scene is laid in a surreal castle where two prisoners, Quiss and Ajayi, are being held for failing as soldiers in the War Against Banality and Interest. The pair, required to answer riddles to win release from this science-fiction hell, miss every time. Banks connects the entirely different events in the novel's closing pages, which reveal what happens between Graham and Sara in a scene so shocking it leaves the reader numb. February 14
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Banks's unusual novel explores the imagination's more grotesque efforts to cope with life, in three personal dilemmas. Graham Park is a young innocent in love, due to awaken to his role in an unwholesome relationship. Steven Grout is a paranoid and a betrayed warrior from another realm, exiled to our world to suffer secret microwave and laser torments as a social misfit. The elderly Quiss and Ajayi themselves are dishonored exiles of a cosmic war, fated to play bizarre games and answer an impossible riddle, in the strangest castle this side of Mervyn Peake. Banks shows a compelling ability to enter their lives. How he brings them together in a fantastic framework is somewhat less compelling. But his vision of disillusion and escape remains memorably funny and sad, like the idea of glass made real in his castle: a transparent yet only apparent solid, that slowly is puddling under the pull of gravity. Recommended. Jeff Clark, SUNY Coll. at Old Westbury Lib.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Macmillan; First Edition edition (March 7, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0333379861
• ISBN-13: 978-0333379868
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,827,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not the sum of its part, but what parts!, March 28, 2003

By 

Michael Battaglia - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Walking on Glass (Paperback)

This was only his second novel so he's not exactly at the top of his game yet, but it shows quite a bit of ambition. It's a story divided into three apparently separate parts. You have one guy who's in love with this rather mysterious girl and it goes through how they met and how he falls for her. The second part involves a rather paranoid fellow who thinks that the world is out to get him and lives his life by that assumption. And the third . . . well the third part is weird. Basically it's two people in a castle (very reminicent of a certain famous fantasy castle) who have to play games that they don't know the rules for and by winning they get a chance to answer a riddle that might let them escape. Banks basically writes three excellent short stories and then attempts to link them by the end, which is where the tale starts to fall apart. The link between the first and second (non-weird) stories are a bit on the coincidental side but at least make sense, while the other links are really stretching it and comes off as more forced than anything else. However, as I mentioned all of the parts are excellent written and stand up fairly well on their own, the first story's revelations are surprising and overall that was the most emotionally involving story. The paranoid gent in the second story was interesting and his attempts to stay ahead of the ubiquitious "they" are sort of fun, in a "glad I'm not him" sort of way, but his story seems to serve no purpose in relation to the overall theme itself. And the last one . . . I don't know if Banks had started writing his SF tales at this point but the castle and the people in it, while borrowing from that certain fantasy castle I mentioned earlier, shows ten times of the imagination of the other parts and even other SF books. The other two stories make them novel interesting, the addition of the third part pushes it into "excellent" territory and basically made the book for me. Its revelations are also the most mind-boggling (I only guessed part of it) but again only have a tenuous relation to the rest of the book. So if you go into this as reading three quasi-linked short stories in one book, you'll find this is an excellent read and Banks certainly gets points for both trying and coming pretty close to pulling it off. Fortunately, he would get better with practice (see the structure of "Use of Weapons" which is nearly flawless).

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Humpty, December 5, 1999

By 

James - See all my reviews

This review is from: Walking on Glass (Hardcover)

This book was not a satisfying read. I feel Banks could have concentrated on one plot, rather than split it into three: the juxtaposition of "surreal" with "real" doesn't sit very well with me. Also, as another reviewer has said, the links at the end are very weak indeed. But there are brilliant moments of precise language and humour. The images presented to me via Banks were superb; they just needed a good tweaking as far as plot's concerned. But, it's worth a read. Sort of.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easily the most thought provoking book I've ever read, September 7, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Walking on Glass (Hardcover)

How do we judge reality? Banks creates three realities, twisted through a series of connections that seem to simaltaeously disprove one another. How can we know which is real, can reality only exist in a form we can relate to, or is it indeed every bit as ludicrous as one dimensional chess? Are they all real, or creations of a mental patient in a hard hat? Each scenario is systematically destroyed by logic, stripped bare by coincidence. Not least the idea of reality Banks has us cling to. All this in the journey from an office to a girlfriend's flat. You can't say fairer than that. Five Stars.