... As his father hides away in his study, up to no good, Frank embarks upon military campaigns against rabbits and sacrifices wasps in his own warped version of the Delphi Oracle, The Wasp Factory. Tension rises as Frank waits for Eric, his older brother. Eric is a charming chap who has taken ... Read review
Advantages: Funny, rude, vital. Disadvantages: Lost its context, some may find it offensive.
...an eccentric man to say the least - on a remote Scottish island. Frank is not your run-of-the mill adolescent; he announces from the outset that he is a three times familial murderer with the throwaway line, "it was just a stage I was going through". Frank's distasteful personal habits and strange, obsessive daily routines are gruesome yet hilarious in the darkest kind of way. As his father hides away in his study, up to no good, Frank ... ...his own warped version of the Delphi Oracle, The Wasp Factory. Tension rises as Frank waits for Eric, his older brother. Eric is a charming chap who has taken to setting fire to dogs. He has escaped from a secure mental hospital and is on his way home. Given Frank's own weird, fetishistic existence, this is an extremely worrying prospect…
The Wasp Factory is a sort of whodunnit, howdunnit, whydunnit, all wrapped up in a thick coating ... more
Frank, a physically deformed young man in his mid-teens, lives with his father - an eccentric man to say the least - on a remote Scottish island. Frank is not your run-of-the mill adolescent; he announces from the outset that he is a three times familial murderer with the throwaway line, "it was just a stage I was going through". Frank's distasteful personal habits and strange, obsessive daily routines are gruesome yet hilarious in the darkest kind of way. As his father hides away in his study, up to no good, Frank embarks upon military campaigns against rabbits and sacrifices wasps in his own warped version of the Delphi Oracle, The Wasp Factory. Tension rises as Frank waits for Eric, his older brother. Eric is a charming chap who has taken to setting fire to dogs. He has escaped from a secure mental hospital and is on his way home. Given Frank's own weird, fetishistic existence, this is an extremely worrying prospect…
The Wasp Factory is a sort of whodunnit, howdunnit, whydunnit, all wrapped up in a thick coating of outrageous black humour. Re-reading it after many years this week, it still made me laugh aloud. It is just so… gruesome! I love the style. Admirably sparse and spare, it is full of short, sharp, acidic and very funny throwaway lines. And it rattles on apace. Just a short little book – under two hundred pages – you could read it in an afternoon. Actually, I just did! Frank's amoral adventures are really quite sickening and you will need an appetite for the sort of dark comedy that verges on the pornographic. There are rude words, gory scenes, rude bits and some quite revolting cruelties to animals. I wonder if it is quite the ticket to admit to liking this sort of satire in public, but I do like it, for it does have some points to make.
To set those points in context, it is important to remember that Banks wrote the Wasp Factory during the Thatcher years. It is his first novel and he was a young, rebellious man when he wrote it. I was a young, rebellious reader! And so, unsurprisingly, it read then very much as a satire of social exclusion – Frank even lives remotely, in a cold, lonely area. This exclusion leaves him isolated also from a normal moral code. The Wasp Factory may be a funny book, but it was, then, also a pessimistic one, perhaps a warning of the things that could happen in a society that has ceased to care for its unfortunates. As the current Booker winner, Vernon God Little speaks volumes to the No Logo generation, The Wasp Factory spoke volumes to those who hated the wholesale disenfranchisement of those Thatcher years.
Taken out of its political time and place, The Wasp Factory suffers a little. The Grocer's Daughter is gone and today the book's readers lack a target for all this venom. Without this relevance, its effect is reduced, and somewhat blunted. Some of it seems just plain sick. And without the background, the book's cult status seems somewhat undeserved. It is a funny, rude tale about unpleasant, peculiar people, but to a noughties audience I would imagine that it sounds like a hollow vessel making an awful lot of rather pointless noise. However, what is left is still technically good and has that energy and vitality so often associated with first novels. It does have flaws and it is a bit rough round the edges, but it makes up for this lack of polish with an unmistakable enthusiasm for the task.
I guess ultimately, The Wasp Factory is a kind of extended Tales of the Unexpected with an added Shock Your Granny factor. As such, it will appeal probably more to the young. It is certainly a step up from those other yoof cult classics, The Dice Man and American Psycho (why does anyone like these two books? They are both dreadful) but, in retrospect, it is not as good as its contemporary "competitor" and other first novel, The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan. Neither, despite its shock value, is it as good as many of Banks' later works. Of those, I would recommend you to start with Espedair Street. I love that book.
The Wasp Factory is rude. It is twisted. It is funny. It is not for the fainthearted. It probably isn't the cult classic its reputation would have you believe, but it is worth reading, if only for the embarrassed, squirming, guilty giggles.
Advantages: original and gripping Disadvantages: may be a bit too dark for some tastes
...those readers who subscribe to the currently fashionable notion that man is vile."
So read a review in the Evening Standard of Banks' debut novel, first published in 1984. And I agree completely. If you're willing to read of horrific torture and what is probably the world's most dysfunctional family, then this could well be the book for you.
Meet Frank, the novel's narrator. Living with his father on a small Scottish island, he does not actually ... ...that this was wrong on the part of his father, but he has been educated at home, so he is content.
However, the family's home life is not a simple one: at only sixteen years old, Frank already has the murders of three younger family members under his belt. He thinks about these murders all the time, but nobody else has realised yet that it was him - they all think the deaths were bizarre coincidences...
Add to this equation Frank's brother Eric, ...
emmorticia 14.05.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Advantages: Compelling, original Disadvantages: Disturbing
This is the first book op I’ve done, so be gentle with me!! It’s 7 years since I did English A Level, so the ability to write critical essays on literature is lost in the mists of time….
I recently finished reading ‘The Wasp Factory’, which was recommended to me by a friend. I bought it quite cheaply on Amazon, which has all of Iain Banks’ work. I hadn’t read any of his work before, and to honest I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect I had heard ... ...taste in fiction, I read the book with a fairly open mind.
The Wasp Factory tells the story of Frank; Frank is 16 years old and lives in a remote part of Scotland with his Dad, an ageing hippie, who lets Frank pretty much do what he likes. Frank’s brother Eric has been committed to a mental institution because of his severe psychological problems, which involves doing nasty things to animals, dogs in particular. Frank’s favourite pastime is performing ...
e_rees3 06.02.2003
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Advantages: Dark, thought provoking page turner - exceedingly well written Disadvantages: Dark. Very dark. Disturbing. Scenes of animal and child cruelty
...a full deck either. The Wasp Factory is a strange book. The plot, such as it is, follows Frank on his isolated Scottish Island as he prepares for the imminent arrival of his half-brother Eric, who has escaped from a secure mental institution. However, that's not really the main point of this rather short novel (I read it in around a day). The book is narrated by Frank, who is a deeply unreliable narrator. Indeed, every 'fact' we learn should be treated ... ...event is filtered first through the character the event has happened to, and then through Frank. Because the book is written in the first person always in Frank's voice, the language is at times rough (I don't mean swearing, though there is a bit of that) - it is, after all, the voice of an adolescent, and a disturbed one at that. "I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something ...
mattygroves 31.08.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Advantages: Compelling reading Disadvantages: Too short, so the reading experience ends too soon
Three murders and the boy is only 16 - that is quite a tally for one so young. The book is written in the first person by Frank, our 'hero'. Frank lives with his father but has never been registered with the authorities and so doesn't really exist as a legal entity. He is left to his own devices each day by his old ex-hippy father, and what he does each day would certainly win him a prize for imagination, if not for kindness to animals or respect ... ...as that would detract from the reading of the novel. But let me just put two words together and let your imaginations run riot: rabbits, flamethrower. Frank also describes the three murders he has committed. He describes the method, his feelings at the time and his methods of avoiding discovery. His reasons, to a rational person, may not seem fathomable; his cousin, Esmerelda, was only murdered to even up the balance (his first two victims were male)! ...
Ophelia 28.11.2002
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
Advantages: A really interesting and obscure read. Disadvantages: 'Sick' in parts and thus unsuitable for some.
The Wasp Factory.
*********************
I spotted Iain Bank's the Wasp Factory on a friend's bookshelf at the end of last year. It was the title that intrigued me more than anything. The book is described on the front as a 'gothic horror novel' and the back page reads:
Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least. 'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother ... ...through.' I borrowed the book and I just finished it last week. Here's what I thought. The Story-Line. ****************
The book is told from the perspective of Frank Cauldhame, a sixteen year old who lives on a tiny and remote Scottish island owned by his reclusive father. Frank does not officially exist. His birth was never registered and he does not attend school. His father lets him run wild in return for his silence about his official non-existence. ...
nickyturnill 16.01.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
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Advantages: Great story, dark humour Disadvantages: A bit predictable?
IainBanks, since his debut book 'The waspfactory' has consistently turned out exceptional and imaginative stories and 'Complicity' is no exception. In fact, I think it is his best book to date.
The reader is given a sleazy, testy main character, Cameron, who reflects a lot of what is dark about modern living. With constant substance abuse, an ongoing sado-masochistic affair with his best friend's wife, and an obsession with a computer game, there is a lot of dark humour in the story.
The story revolves around a spate of murders and attacks which happen to rich, powerful members of the establishment. The writing is so intense and comic that the reader is led into feeling no pity for the victims, as they meet their fate in ever more bizarre and humourous ways.
The eventual twist in the tale is almost predictable, but ...
Advantages: Great plot, good characters. Disadvantages: Technical, requires prior experience.
First, a slightly contraversial statement. Do not read this book if you are not a SciFi Banks fan. Not understanding the difference between Iain M. Banks and IainBanks (of WaspFactory fame) will cause extereme bewilderment.
That said, this book caused me genuine emotion - largely complete and utter disbelief. How does he consistently manage to get so much into his mind at one time, and yet pull it out in a coherent manner?
The story revolves around a conspiracy between the controlling AI of a community of spacecraft. Several communities, in fact. This conspiracy comes to light only because the wider spacefaring society comes under threat from an anomaly (the Excession) in the fabric of space.
And that is as much detail as I'm going to give - Banks fans will by now have rushed off to buy the book, since it is a pure Mind ...
Advantages: Clever, imaginative, gripping Disadvantages: Meandering plot (but resolved in due course)
IainBanks' writing has, in my opinion, been something of a disappointment after "WaspFactory", but this is one of those fantastic blips a la "Complicity"; Banks's best since "WF". The Business is a centuries-old, pan-national organisation which has decided to further their aims by effectively buying a country. What happens after that, well you'll have to buy the book, but it's a clever, thought-provoking tale, with Banks' dark intellect and black wit operating at its peak, as well as spinning a yarn as eminently readable as Stephen King at his best. The wide range of characters is well-drawn, and the plot just meandering enough to keep you wondering what the hell's going to happen; if I have a criticism, it's that it takes a long time to work out what the central story is, but the lack of clean-cut lines is finally a part of its ...
Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outsIde a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and changes Frank utterly. Iain Banks' celebrated first novel is a work of extraordinary originality, imagination and horrifying compulsion: horrifying, because it enters a mind whose realities are not our own, whose values of life and death are alien to our society; and compulsive, because the humour and compassion of that mind reach out to us all.
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