Iain Banks

The polarizing literary debut by Scottish author Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory is the bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath. Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least: Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.

A Novel

The Wasp Factory

Iain M. Banks

Frank, a disturbed boy who lives alone with his father, creates a bizarre fantasy world for himself which includes strange rituals and murder

This was a fantastic, powerful read. The book is less disturbing (think Blood Meridian) and more bizarre. The ending is worth reading through all of the animal torture for.

Owen McGrath

This book has me torn. Very unique and strange. Hard to get a grasp on. Surprising and dark and yet strangely uplifting. It kept me engaged and wanting to keep reading and so i would say it’s effective. I’m curious about this author’s other works.

Bowie 

jess larry

Oh well. It was a very disturbing read, with sick (& very delusional) characters and a meh ending. 

It was fascinating though to get a look the MC's deeply deranged mind, especially how he thought of himself as the sanest individual in a wicked world (very delusional like i said).

Overall not the best book I read but not horrible either. And once again the ending was quite empty, I needed something more.

Sofia Arcângelo 

A deeply disturbing story about a teenager that lives with his father. This is a story of a teenager that has committed murder, cruelty against animals, and other dysfuncional behaviours. Although I like horror books, this particular one is not my cup of tea, it was really difficult to me to keep reading it and sometimes it felt like a very monotonous task, although the ending was worth the effort to finish the book.

Janice Hopper

Really well-written book about characters that are... Unlikeable? Not exactly. Reprehensible? Ya, probably. Crazy? Oh yeah. 

But it's oddly compelling and readable.

Moe S.

This book was so frustrating to finish… so many chapters that contribute nothing to the main plot. 
On the bright side though.. the language was vivid and the witting was simplistic.

Samiha Tasnim

A death is always exciting, always makes you realise how alive you are, how vulnerable but so-far-lucky; but the death of somebody close gives you a good excuse to go a bit crazy for a while and do things that would otherwise be inexcusable. What delight to behave really badly and still get loads of sympathy!


The Sea is a sort of mythological enemy, and I make what you might call sacrifices to it in my soul, fearing it a little, respecting it as you’re supposed to, but in many ways treating it as an equal. It does things to the world, and so do I; we should both be feared.

Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn’t really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.


If we’re really so bad and so thick that we’d actually use all those wonderful H-bombs and Neutron bombs on each other, then maybe it’s just as well we do wipe ourselves out before we can get into space and start doing horrible things to other races.


All our lives are symbols. Everything we do is part of a pattern we have at least some say in. The strong make their own patterns and influence other people’s, the weak have their courses mapped out for them. The weak and the unlucky, and the stupid.


...it can be unsettling to hear yourself described as you have thought of yourself in your most honest and abject moods, just as it is humbling to hear what you have thought about in your most hopeful and unrealistic moments.


I know who I am and I know my limitations. I restrict my horizons for my own good reasons; fear - oh, yes, I admit it - and a need for reassurance and safety in a world which just so happened to treat me very cruelly at an age before I had any real chance of affecting it.


Inside this greater machine, things are not quite so cut and dried (or cut and pickled) as they have appeared in my experience. Each of us, in our own personal Factory, may believe we have stumbled down one corridor, and that our fate is sealed and certain (dream or nightmare, humdrum or bizarre, good or bad), but a word, a glance, a slip - anything can change that, alter it entirely, and our marble hall becomes a gutter, or our rat-maze a golden path. Our destination is the same in the end, but our journey - part chosen, part determined - is different for us all, and changes even as we live and grow. I thought one door had snicked shut behind me years ago; in fact I was still crawling about the face. Now the door closes, and my journey begins.

Alexia

I was thoroughly enjoying the writing style and psychopath POV, but I just couldn’t keep on reading. Wherever animals get hurt I just can’t bare it, and these ones were more than getting hurt. With humans I can stomach it, but with animals... not a chance. However, although this one is a DNF for me, I’d like to read something else by Banks, because he had me enticed and I read more than I could handle, just because of the prose.

Sunyi Dean

From 5 stars, to 2 stars: a great concept, enjoyably written, that nonetheless lacked payoff (either emotional or plot-based). The ending hinged on a very unbelievable revelation that I couldn't buy into and which didn't wrap up all of the interesting elements that came before. 


FULL SPOILERS AHEAD: 


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In addition to all the weird madness going on with his psychotic brother and hideous father, the various animal torture and bizarre oddities product of damaged people, another plot runs through the novel. MC (Frank) has lived his whole life believing he is a young man who was castrated in a terrible accident. This event has shaped his life in a variety of ways. 

However, at the end of the novel, Frank discovers that isn't a castrated young man, just a mauled young woman whose father has been giving "her" hormone drugs in a kind of cruel experiment to raise her as a boy. Frank states that what s/he'd assumed was the stump of a penis was actually a clitoris, and this I find difficult to believe. 

An anatomy lesson for those who somehow don't know: I would expect most men/boys to have an awareness that they are supposed to urinate through their penis. Women, though, don't urinate through the clitoris. So what on earth s/he thought was happening down there for every toilet trip, I have 0 idea. 

Mostly, though, the novel fails to explore that revelation in (for me) a satisfying way. There's a lot of mileage to be gained from examining that situation more, and the person Frank has become or could have been, but it's not really delved into, and that's a shame. That means, too, that the novel feels like it has no pay off, because the other aspects of Frank's life (which are all intensely interesting in their own right) are left unresolved: the revelations about Frank's sex come out of left field, and don't tie up the character development or the unusualness of Frank's horrific family. 

The story suffers from one of my biggest pet peeves: it doesn't end so much as simply 'stop' dead.

A real shame for me, because it started off strong and was only let down in the last 10% of novel. Particularly annoying since I feel it could easily have been a longer novel, and resolved those issues through more words (it's quite a slim book, so hardly over-stuffed with story.)

'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.' Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.

Jordan Robinson

Wow... I think to think about this one as well.

The last books of January have been weeeeird, my guy.

Lisa Trebilcock

Just too brutal, especially towards the animals, for my liking. Couldn't keep reading those scenes.

Amelia Irené

Around 4.2 stars.

Enjoyed it, the ending definitely bumped it to a higher score - shocking but possibly needed ending??

Carolina Lopes

I... don't know what to say

A mix between "I really enjoyed this" and "what the hell did I just read"

The Wasp Factory A Novel

Reviews