Listen free for 30 days
-
Walking On Glass
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Categories: Literature & Fiction, Genre Fiction
People who bought this also bought...
-
The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
-
-
Interesting but thin on plot
- By Stuart on 04-09-15
-
The Wasp Factory
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.
-
-
PERFECT
- By GOGS on 14-10-08
-
Espedair Street
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever (however long that turns out to be). Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? And now Daniel Weir is all alone.
-
-
Breathtaking
- By Zara on 14-05-17
-
Whit
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Helen McAlpine
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Innocent in the ways of the world, an ingenue when it comes to pop and fashion, the Elect of God of a small but committed Stirlingshire religious cult: Isis Whit is no ordinary teenager. When her cousin Morag - Guest of Honour at the Luskentyrian's four-yearly Festival of Love - disappears after renouncing her faith, Isis is marked out to venture among the Unsaved and bring the apostate back into the fold.
-
-
Absolutely brilliant
- By VM J on 09-01-20
-
Complicity
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A few spliffs, a spot of mild S&M, phone through the copy of tomorrow's front page, catch up with the latest from your mystery source - could be big, could be very big - in fact, just a regular day at the office for free-wheeling, substance-abusing Cameron Colley, a fully paid-up Gonzo hack on an Edinburgh newspaper. The source is pretty thin, but Cameron senses a scoop and checks out a series of bizarre deaths from a few years ago - only to find that the police are checking out a series of bizarre deaths that are happening right now. And Cameron just might know more about it than he'd care to admit.…
-
-
Why do I like this so much? ....
- By Alison on 07-06-13
-
A Song of Stone
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The war is ending, perhaps ended. For the castle and its occupants the troubles are just beginning. Armed gangs roam a lawless land where each farm and house supports a column of dark smoke. Taking to the roads with the other refugees, anonymous in their raggedness, seems safer than remaining in the ancient keep. However, the lieutenant of an outlaw band has other ideas and the castle becomes the focus for a dangerous game of desire, deceit and death.
-
-
iain banks can do no wrong, apart from dying ...
- By angels on 28-04-18
-
The Bridge
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A man lies in a coma after a near-fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished, he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world free of the usual constraints of time and space, a world where dream and fantasy, past and future, fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or has he never been so alive before?
-
-
Interesting but thin on plot
- By Stuart on 04-09-15
-
The Wasp Factory
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 6 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.
-
-
PERFECT
- By GOGS on 14-10-08
-
Espedair Street
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever (however long that turns out to be). Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? And now Daniel Weir is all alone.
-
-
Breathtaking
- By Zara on 14-05-17
-
Whit
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Helen McAlpine
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Innocent in the ways of the world, an ingenue when it comes to pop and fashion, the Elect of God of a small but committed Stirlingshire religious cult: Isis Whit is no ordinary teenager. When her cousin Morag - Guest of Honour at the Luskentyrian's four-yearly Festival of Love - disappears after renouncing her faith, Isis is marked out to venture among the Unsaved and bring the apostate back into the fold.
-
-
Absolutely brilliant
- By VM J on 09-01-20
-
Complicity
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A few spliffs, a spot of mild S&M, phone through the copy of tomorrow's front page, catch up with the latest from your mystery source - could be big, could be very big - in fact, just a regular day at the office for free-wheeling, substance-abusing Cameron Colley, a fully paid-up Gonzo hack on an Edinburgh newspaper. The source is pretty thin, but Cameron senses a scoop and checks out a series of bizarre deaths from a few years ago - only to find that the police are checking out a series of bizarre deaths that are happening right now. And Cameron just might know more about it than he'd care to admit.…
-
-
Why do I like this so much? ....
- By Alison on 07-06-13
-
A Song of Stone
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The war is ending, perhaps ended. For the castle and its occupants the troubles are just beginning. Armed gangs roam a lawless land where each farm and house supports a column of dark smoke. Taking to the roads with the other refugees, anonymous in their raggedness, seems safer than remaining in the ancient keep. However, the lieutenant of an outlaw band has other ideas and the castle becomes the focus for a dangerous game of desire, deceit and death.
-
-
iain banks can do no wrong, apart from dying ...
- By angels on 28-04-18
-
Transition
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A world that hangs suspended between triumph and catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall and the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism and global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand and a guiding light. But does it need the Concern: an all-powerful organisation with a malevolent presiding genius, pervasive influence and numberless invisible operatives in possession of extraordinary powers?
-
-
Audio book of the year
- By MikeyC on 10-11-09
-
The Algebraist
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Geoff Annis
- Length: 24 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
For short-lived races like humans, space is dominated by the complicated, grandiose Mercatoria. To the Dwellers who may live billions of years, the galaxy consists of their gas-giant planets - the rest is debris. Fassin Taak is a Slow Seer privileged to work with the Dwellers of the gas-giant Nasqueron. His work consists of rummaging for data in their vast, disorganised memories and libraries. Unfortunately, without knowing it, he's come close to an ancient secret of unimaginable importance.
-
-
Spoiled by awful narration
- By Martin on 05-12-17
-
Dead Air
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 11 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A couple of ice cubes first, then the apple that really started it all. A loft apartment in London's East End; cool but doomed - demolition and redevelopment slated fro the following week. Ken Nott, devoutly contrarian leftish shock-jock attending a mid-week wedding lunch, starts dropping stuff off the rood towards the deserted car park 100 feet below. Other guests join in and soon half the contents of the flat are following the fruit towards the pitted tarmac... just as mobiles start to ring, and the apartment's remaining TV is turned on, because apparently a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center....
-
-
Some of Iain Banks best writing
- By Charles on 08-05-16
-
Canal Dreams
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Lisa Coleman
- Length: 7 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Hisako Onoda, world famous cellist, refuses to fly. And so she travels to Europe as a passenger on a tanker bound through the Panama Canal. But Panama is a country whose politics are as volatile as the local freedom fighters. When Hisako's ship is captured, it is not long before the atmostphere is as flammable as an oxy-acetylene torch, and the tension as sharp as the spike on the cello....
-
-
Canal Nightmares!
- By Annie on 23-11-14
-
Stonemouth
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Stewart Gilmour is back in Stonemouth. After five years in exile, his presence is required at the funeral of patriarch Joe Murston, and even though the last time Stu saw the Murstons he was running for his life, staying away might be even more dangerous than turning up. An estuary town north of Aberdeen, Stonemouth, with its five mile beach, can be beautiful on a sunny day. On a bleak one it can seem to offer little more than sea fog, gangsters, cheap drugs and a suspension bridge irresistible to suicides.
-
-
Revenge and Regret on the Scottish Coast
- By Steve on 28-04-12
-
The Quarry
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 9 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kit doesn't know who his mother is. What he does know, however, is that his father, Guy, is dying of cancer. Feeling his death is imminent, Guy gathers around him his oldest friends - or at least the friends with the most to lose by his death. Paul - the rising star in the Labour party who dreads the day a tape they all made at university might come to light; Alison and Robbie, corporate bunnies whose relationship is daily more fractious; Pris and Haze, once an item, now estranged, and finally Hol - friend, mentor, former lover and the only one who seemed to care.
-
-
Excellent narration of Iain's last book
- By Bammosan on 15-07-13
-
Consider Phlebas
- Culture Series, Book 1
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 16 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The war raged across the galaxy. Billions had died, billions more were doomed. Moons, planets, the very stars themselves, faced destruction - cold-blooded, brutal, and worse, random. The Idirans fought for their Faith; the Culture for its moral right to exist. Principles were at stake. There could be no surrender. Within the cosmic conflict, an individual crusade....
-
-
A Truly Great Sci-Fi Novel
- By scotty on 09-04-12
-
The Steep Approach to Garbadale
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Wopuld family built their fortune on a board game called Empire, now a wildly successful computer game. So successful, in fact, that the American Spraint Corp wants to buy the Wopulds out. Alban, who has been evading the family tentacles for the last few years, thinks Spraint should be treated with suspicion, but he also has other things on his mind. What, for example, drove his mother to take her own life?
-
-
Very enjoyable
- By Jane on 20-06-07
-
Against a Dark Background
- By: Iain M. Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 18 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Sharrow was once the leader of a personality-attuned combat team in one of the sporadic little commercial wars in the civilisation based around the planet Golter. Now she is hunted by the Huhsz, a religious cult which believes that she is the last obstacle before the faith's apotheosis, and her only hope of escape is to find the last of the apocalyptically powerful Lazy Guns before the Huhsz find her.
-
-
It's probably just me but...
- By Paul on 25-10-12
-
The Crow Road
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Peter Kenny
- Length: 13 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
It was the day my grandmother exploded. I sat in the crematorium, listening to my Uncle Hamish quietly snoring in harmony to Bach's Mass in B Minor, and I reflected that it always seemed to be death that drew me back to Gallanach. Prentice McHoan has returned to the bosom of his complex but enduring Scottish family. Full of questions about the McHoan past, present and future, he is also deeply preoccupied: mainly with death, sex, drink, God, and illegal substances.…
-
-
Highly enjoyable
- By Rachel on 07-04-13
-
The Business
- By: Iain Banks
- Narrated by: Harriet Kershaw
- Length: 12 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Kate Telman is a senior executive officer in The Business, a powerful and massively discreet transglobal organisation whose origins predate the Christian Church. Financially transparent, internally democratic it wants to buy its own state in order to acquire a seat at the United Nations. Kate's job is to keep abreast of current technological developments and her global reach encompasses Silicon Valley to the remote Himalayas.
-
-
Yet another good read
- By Simon on 23-06-15
-
Utopia Avenue
- By: David Mitchell
- Narrated by: Andrew Wincott
- Length: 25 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Utopia Avenue are the strangest British band you've never heard of. Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967 and fronted by folksinger Elf Holloway, guitar demigod Jasper de Zoet and blues bassist Dean Moss, Utopia Avenue released only two LPs during its brief and blazing journey from the clubs of Soho and draughty ballrooms to Top of the Pops and the cusp of chart success, to glory in Amsterdam, prison in Rome and a fateful American fortnight in the autumn of 1968.
-
-
Bland On The Run
- By Penny Lane on 21-07-20
Summary
Her eyes were black, wide as though with some sustained surprise, the skin from their outer corners to her small ears taut. Her lips were pale, and nearly too full for her small mouth, like something bled but bruised. He had never seen anyone or anything quite so beautiful in his life. 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, insecure in his fabulous if ramshackle castle, is forced to play interminable impossible games. The solution to the oldest of all paradoxical riddles will release him. But he must find an answer before he knows the question. Park, Grout, Quiss - no trio could be further apart. But their separate courses are set for collision.
Critic reviews
More from the same
Author
Narrator
What listeners say about Walking On Glass
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Chris Tarplee
- 30-11-20
35 years
I started to read this book when I bought it, on the day of its release 35 years ago.
I finished it in double quick (too quick) time and somehow missed it's brilliance.
I'm now 54 years old and I take my time about things. Listening, instead of reading. it is a brilliant book. Iain Banks is the master and I miss him very much.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Stuart
- 17-04-15
Not his best and a little confusing
If you're an Iain Banks fan, then this is worth listening to. If you're an Iain M. Banks fan, then this is also worth a shot, as it's one of his "cross-over" books, much like "Transition".
However, unlike some of his other books, I didn't really warm to any of the main characters and a couple of them positively annoyed me.
It also takes Banks's penchant for leaving things open to interpretation and takes it to an extreme. For my tastes, it really is a little to open ended, with too many possibilities to get any real satisfaction at the books conclusion.
On the good side, it's as well written as you would expect from early Banks and read as excellently as ever by Peter Kenny.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ali H.
- 03-01-16
Unsatisfactory Backs with more than a hint of M
3 different stories, or interpretations of reality?
At least 2 of them collide, but the listener is denied the satisfaction of an explanation in the end, and left to their own interpretation. Many abound in literal circles, but mine is just that it's just too much like life - an unsatisfactory ending.
Well read, though.
1 person found this helpful