This is the Banks style of throwing the reader in the deep end, with continued reading being rewarded by a story that unfolds like origami, where at the end you can see the folds and the fault lines that would have been impossible to see at the start.
Told in first person (if you don’t like first person POV, you will really not enjoy this book!), Frank tells his story in the order he pleases. His only contact with the outside world is drinking at the village pub with his friend Jamie, and answering the phone when his brother Eric calls the house.įrank’s father doesn’t have it easy either: two failed relationships, one son who died in a freak accident, another son who had a mental breakdown, and then there’s Frank, who hopefully will never leave home. This is the life that Frank knows, and he is satisfied with it. His father, a retired doctor, handles any medical issues that come up. Mentioned early in the story, he doesn’t have a birth certificate, was never registered for school, and doesn’t have any ID. It’s a good thing Frank prefers to spend time by himself, building dams in the river, shooting rabbits on the island, and walking through the woods, as he knows it is a bad idea for him to spend time away from home and off the island. Now in his late teens, Frank has always lived on the island with his father. If A Clockwork Orange and Lord of the Flies had an ultraviolent psychopathic younger brother they didn’t want anyone to know about, The Wasp Factory is that brother.
Oh, you’re thinking grimark? I think Frank Cauldhame could give even Jorg a run for his money. This is a novel in which a child commits premeditated murder three times before the age of eleven, and doesn’t feel the slightest remorse.
The Wasp Factory is solid violence, nastiness, sociopathic tendencies, animal abuse, and cold blooded murder. It’s easy to read, the vocabulary isn’t difficult, and I have no complaints on the pacing. Yup, this is definitely a Banks novel!Īt less than two hundred pages, you’d think this book would be a fast read. He throws you in the deep end on page one, leaves you on your own to figure out the local slang terms, populates the book with characters who are as confident in their actions as they are secretive about their motives, and then flips everything inside out for the climactic reveal. The Wasp Factory may not be science fiction (or anything even approaching a Culture novel), but oh is it so very Iain Banks.
Without that middle initial, you’re holding a contemporary fiction novel in your hands. Banks then? Some Culture novels? The “.M” means you’re reading his science fiction.
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