"Walking on Glass" by Iain Banks

Iain Banks is famous for writing two sorts of novels: mainstream fiction, and sic fi under the name Iain M. Banks.

Walking on Glass, his second novel, is composed of three stories. Graham Park is an Art Student in love with the enigmatic Sara ffitch. The book follows him as he walks to meet her: the chapter headings are the names of the streets he walks through. Steven Grout is a paranoid person who believes that he is an Admiral from the inter-galactic wars imprisoned on Earth: his chapter names are the names of people he encounters; except for his last chapter each starts with an exclamation: sacked! unemployed! social insecurity! drunk! Quiss really is a soldier from the intergalactic wars who is imprisoned in a ruinous castle with Ayaji against whom he has to play endless strange games: each chapter is entitled with the game: one-dimensional chess, open-plan go, spotless dominoes, chinese scrabble and tunnel (like bridge with blank cards).

Their stories intersect. A bit. Sort of.

The Graham story was delightful because he was a lovely young man in love and his best friend was a happily camp gay man. The Quiss story was the funniest, with nonsenses like a machine that chops up statues in the shape of numbers (because it is a number-cruncher) which are made from Plaster of Salt Lake City (like Plaster of Paris only duller). So Banks demonstrates his ability for lyrical description, for entering into the twisted logic of a madman and for weird humour. I was impressed with his writing ability but I'm not sure that I actually enjoyed the book.

May 2009; 239 pages