Walking On Glass by Iain Banks

I’ve just finished this novel and I realise that that is quite a big deal for these days, so I thought I’d mark the occasion with a review.

First of all, I should point out that I have not been reading much these days and my attention span is probably as bad as most other people out there. I also recently got into the habit of buying (secondhand) books before finishing ones I already have. So please keep that in mind. If your attention span seems in good nick, then maybe your enjoyment and comprehension factors of these books may be more compared to mine.

So I became conscious of this book somewhere in the middle. That’s when I began paying attention… The first half was just me casting my eyes over inked pages, making neither head nor tail of apparently meaningless markings. And then suddenly- oh! It’s three viewpoints jumping back and forth! 

Graham

Graham seems to be some kind of art student who is besotted with a girl called Sara, introduced to him by his gay friend. Things do not seem to bode well though, and not just because he is in a Banks novel.

The Captives

There are two prisoners from some kind of space war set in the distant future held captive in this castle, seemingly destined to forever take part in infinitely difficult games in order to win their freedom by then answering a riddle: what happens when an unstoppable force meets and immovable object? This thread seems like something out of an Iain M Banks novel.

The Unemployed Guy

Steven has emotional issues including paranoia. He goes from job centre interview to interview being ultra sensitive and convinced they are all out to get him.

The novel jumps back and forth between these three subplots without ever (at least not until the final act) connecting them. This made it very hard for me to motivate myself or get into what I was reading. I suppose you would call it a slow bunny boiler. I just felt a lot of it could have been compressed. For example the captives. I understand the author wanted to share with me the sense of time and frustration being experienced by them, but I don’t understand why you would want to make someone feel the time and frustration of standing at a bus stop for an overdue bus. That’s a problem, knowing where to draw the line, and would the bus even ever come?

I’ve since asked a colleague what she thought of this book and she said she liked it. But for me it was like waiting for a bus and then three coming at once.

3*