by
Iain Banks
352
pages, Abacus
Review
by Pat Black
Bit
of blasphemy, now.
Walking On Glass is
Iain Banks’ second novel, published a year after the neo-gothic shock of The Wasp Factory. It must have come as a
disappointment to many people intrigued by what the young Scots author would do
next.
It
tells three different stories. First, there’s art student Graham Park, who is
in love with the exciting, enigmatic Sarah ffitch (not a typo) after meeting
her at a party.
Then
there’s Steven Grout, a labourer suffering from paranoid delusions that he is
an admiral in an intergalactic, interdimensional war, marooned on earth. He
needs to escape from his earthly confines, and must somehow endure the tedium
of life on this planet until then – but how?
Finally,
we follow Quist and Ajayi, who actually are two admirals from an intergalactic
war, imprisoned in a strange, fantasy-land castle where they are set an old
philosophical problem: what happens when an unstoppable force meets an
immovable object?
As
you might suppose, the three stories interlink in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
I’m
a big fan of Iain Banks, but I’ll say this early on: this isn’t a very good
novel. I’m glad I didn’t read this one first; I might never have gone back. I
wonder what his publishers thought? Banks himself seemed apologetic in later
interviews.
The
big problem is that the three individual stories just aren’t very interesting. No
faulting the prose, just the lack of events. Graham Park is young and naïve,
dawdling through what he thinks is a love affair with Sarah, his head in the
stratosphere. There is a rival on the scene – divorced Sarah’s sometime lover,
the hulking biker Bob Stock. But he’s a presence in the background, something
to occupy Graham’s mind as interest becomes obsession.
More
interesting to me was Richard Slater, Graham’s gay friend. Slater’s “great
ideas for stories” were the first thing to get me fully engaged in the book. In
the bizarre plots and pay-offs Slater outlines to a bored and sometimes
exasperated Graham – including an overt nod to Douglas Adams – this, finally,
was the Iain Banks I know.
But
by and large this segment of the story is that very strange thing: a love
affair without any sex. I was frustrated. Perhaps I am a dirtier devil than I
thought.
Steven
Grout was even more difficult to listen to, and in fact almost drove me into
the arms of Muriel Spark. Grout’s imaginings are perhaps clinically insane –
his intergalactic enemies are everywhere and nowhere; he is blasted by
microwave weapons, and the hubcaps from cars seek to destroy him with death
rays. It was difficult to listen to after a while. This was a hat-tip to
realism, as it replicated the sensation of paranoia which we’re all familiar
with, but it was a curious ordeal for me. Perhaps Banks essayed paranoia too successfully.
Worse
than his invisible foes, Grout runs up against the world of bureaucracy, as he
is sacked from his job and then seeks to draw unemployment benefit. There are
forms to fill in, details to be attended to, nosey landladies to be lied to and
smirking ingrates with clipboards to be endured. Grout is fuming, all the time,
a ticking bomb, and also makes some absolutely hopeless mistakes in his
day-to-day life which had me slapping my forehead. When he started being
careless with his pay-off from his job, it was as unbearable as his psychic
warfare with his intergalactic jailers.
Topping
off this awkward triptych is the story of Quist, imprisoned in his castle with
Ajayi. The castle is very well described by Banks, and that’s probably the
biggest problem with this section. The outline of the Heath Robinson-esque
architecture and its strange mechanics and engineering in the bowels of the
castle were probably significant to the story and the overall themes of the
book, but by god I found it dull. If you’re excited by the idea of bridges and
thought Meccano was a great toy for a kid,
then read on, and be glad. Anyone else – beware.
Quist
and Ajayi are tormented by the custodians and guards of the castle, led by the
sarcastic red crow, a talking bird. The pair are imprisoned for deadly mistakes
they made in the past, and although they are sci-fi characters, the castle has
a fantasy/fairytale style. The dwarfish servants are abused and tortured by
Quist, a sour old boor who can’t get the central problem they must solve right
– but to no avail.
The
stories do interlink, and I guess there are extra marks on show for anyone
looking for the more subtle parallels and callbacks. Stacks of books is one;
the sheer tedium of bureaucracy is another.
There’s
no faulting Banks’ prose, and he illustrates Graham’s infatuation with Sarah
ffitch as beautifully as he ever did. The small details and tiny torments of a
young man in love were exquisite – the feeling, gone all too soon, that the
birds sing just for him.
Slater,
always in the background, is a mischievous presence rooted in 1980s student
politics but quite endearing with it (like Banks forever was). He enhances the
plot as best he can.
One
thing I will say about this part is that Banks captures sexual naivety very
well. You know that Graham is heading for trouble from the first moment he
meets Sarah – and that in his first rush of adult love, he may be as delusional
as Steven Grout. Again, the longer this went on, the more painful it was to
read. We have probably all been there. Everybody’s gotta learn sometime.
By
the time the glass shatters and all secrets are revealed, the book does shift
gears, but all too late. I remember thinking: well, this is a strange book for
one big reason - there’s none of Banks’ usual pervy preoccupations with incest,
for a start.
Erp.
There
are other Banks tells, such as a fascination with games of every kind, whether
played on boards, computers or battlefields. And then there’s the idea of
infidelity as a weapon – the realisation that the object of one character’s
affection has been f*cking someone else, and then the humiliation and mockery
that follows the shock of realisation.
It’s
a nasty thing to do and to take pleasure in. If it happened once or twice in
Banks’ work, I could shrug it off. But it happens quite a lot. I wonder what
Banks got out of it. Same with the incest – Banks, an only child, we should
note, has put this in quite a few of his books. The Crow Road, Use of Weapons
and even right at the end, with The
Quarry. That’s just off the top of my head, and giving the benefit of the
doubt to the air of sexual obsession that haunts The Wasp Factory as Frank’s terrible secret is revealed.
Maybe
Banks was just trying to shock us – he enjoyed doing that, all of his days.
In
summary, Walking On Glass is possibly
the author’s worst out of the ones I’ve read so far, and definitely one to
avoid if you’re thinking of giving Banks a try.
I
can’t decide if it’s too clever for its own good, or nowhere near as clever as
it thinks it is. In sum, that’s nowhere near a recommendation.
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