Customer Reviews

The Wasp Factory

5 star:		(42)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

WOW...that's basically how I can sum up this book. It was awesome and completely exceeded my expectations. I have this habbit of reading one star reviews of books before I buy them. Reason being, it tends to lower my expectations just a little bit. In the case of 'The Wasp Factoy' there were a lot of mixed feelings, so I wasn't sure what to expect, but what I got was definitely better than I had imagined. For this being Banks' first novel I have to say he hit it outta the park. The way he describes things in such vivid detail makes you feel like you are there on the island with this disfunctional (small) family. If I start going into detail about the plot I could go on for pages, not only that, it's hard to describe the plot without giving away the ridiculously smart and shocking ending. In a nutshell it's about a killer without a conscience and I find it to be a very beautiful novel and plan to read it again in the near future. If you like surprise endings then you will love this book. Pick it up, you won't regret it!!!

I purchased this book based on how often it was recommended in the listmanias; I found this short novel both captivating and demented. The story is a first person narrative on a rather dysfunctional family located away from the general flow of humankind. The reader is presented with the thought processes and lifestyle of a sixteen year old murderer whose existence, beliefs and actions revolve around a childhood trauma; Banks does a fine, graphic, job of showing the results of that trauma. The story twists and turns, leaving you gaping at the end; the horror is in the believability that it exists. This is worth a reread just to see how Banks prepares the shocks and surprises. You'll definitely get the willies from this tale of madness.

I couldn't put it down, but I couldn't say that I loved it either. This is one of those rare books that finds a way to fascinate and disgust you at the same time. Banks's descriptions weren't as macabre as I was expecting, but I continually found myself thinking "what kind of twisted mind thought up this obscure story line?"

"The Wasp Factory" has a very unique feeling; as if you've just picked up at a random, although somewhat monumental, moment in "Frank's" life, and then end off almost as arbitrarily. Of course it has a continual story running through it (Eric) but almost everything that happens has little to do with furthering the plot in any way. You just get to know dysfunctional, but somehow likeable, Frank.

All things considered I hardly know how many stars to give this book, and for that strange quality alone, it may just be worth reading.

Iain Banks was born in Scotland in 1954 and published his first book - "The Wasp Factory" - in 1984. In the years since, he's won critical acclaim, topped best-seller lists and has even written Science Fiction books under the cunning nom-de-plume 'Iain M. Banks'.

Frank Cauldhame is sixteen yeras old and hasn't quite had what you'd call a typical upbringing. In fact, he doesn't officially exist : Frank was never registered, has no birth certificate, no passport and no national insurance number. The upside is that, as a result, he's never had to attend school - though he was educated at home by his father. (Angus, Frank's father, did occasionally embellish parts of the curriculem - for example, Frank believed for a time that there was a character called Fellatio in "Hamlet"). Angus is a scientist : the discipline is never clearly identified, though he does appear to be involved in the biomedical sector. These connections have also apparently allowed Angus to provide for Frank's medical needs - despite his son's official non-existance. (These needs were increased at an early age, following a devastating encounter with a dog). Angus' study is strcitly off-limits to Frank and is permanently locked - though Frank is determined to make it inside someday.

The pair are pretty comfortable, whatever it is Angus does for a living. They live on a small island, just off the coast of Portneil in Scotland. Frank never knew his mother, Angus' second wife, as she left shortly after he was born. (Apparently, she didn't care much for children). It's probably lucky for her that she didn't stick around : Frank has turned into a very strange kid whose values and beliefs don't really overlap with those held by 'normal' society. He's very fond of general destruction and killing - so far, he's dispatched two cousins, one brother and various animals. (He's yet to be caught out). He is also very inventive and has essentially created his own belief system - involving a Wasp Factory, some Sacrifice Poles and the Bunker (a pillbox on the beach, a relic from the Second World War). He also has his own name for various parts of the island, depending on what he's done there - for example, the Snake Park, Black Destroyer Hill and the Bomb Circle.

The events of "The Wasp Factory" take place over a couple of days - beginning with the news that Eric, Frank's half-brother, has escaped form hospital. (Eric was committed several years earlier, for setting dogs on fire). The book sees Frank looking back over hsi life, in the build-up to Eric's expected return. This isn't something that causes Frank any great amount of stress, despite the fact that Eric clearly still isn't firing on all thrusters. (Frank's is more than a match for his brother : the worrying this is that he sees himself as being the "somebody sane who still likes" Eric.) Unsurprisingly, the book can be a little gruesome at times and it isn't one I'd recommend if you're feeling a little queasy. However, if you're feeling up to a challenge, it's certainly well worth reading !

I came across this book by accident, finding it at work one night. In about four hours, I had the book read. I read it again the next morning. It is a fantastic piece of literature, especially for teens and twenty-somethings.

It's about a boy, the feeling that he's missing something, and his "adventures" in finding out his truth in a completely different manner than books like Catcher in the Rye.

Bizarre, twisted, and great beyond measure. I have a new found love for Scottish literature.

one of the few books which can stand up to rereading. the black humour and twisted original plot are never equaled unfortunately in banks subsequent work.
on the strength of this book many have plowed through banks other fiction, but this is deservadley a cult classic.
every plot device works to beat a frenzy toward the end of dark malicious humour and a delicious sting in the tale.

This is the first book by Iain Banks and the only one I've read. It is graphically violent and disgustingly twisted. It describes murders of young children and torture of small animals. And in all of this it manages to be a very captivating novel with an air of mystery that only resovles itself at the end of the book. Narrated by a psychopathic 16 year old boy, Banks takes the reader on a tour of a family with a psychotic past, a town where no one's dog is ever safe, and the mind of a killer. In the final chapters, the book switches it's focus, and the lines are blurred between victim and torturer. Because of the graphic descriptions of terrible acts (massacre of a group of rabbits, burning of dogs, the sight that drove Eric crazy) 'The Wasp Factory is not for everyone. But if you can wade through the blood and stomach the descriptions, you will end up with a story that will disturb and shake up your beliefs.

This probably would have been better as a short story or novella - hence sometimes you feel like Banks is padding out as if this was an English assignment. Nevermind.

Very good with a great twist that has become a hallmark Banks' novels.

Not for animal lovers.

The jacket of the book alone--which is reprinted by Amazon here--was enough to get me to pick this novel up. A teenage boy who once went through "a phase" of murdering others gives us a peek into his mind in this incredible debut by Scotsman Banks.

The narrator, Frank, is not your average teenager. Not by a long shot. There doesn't seem to be a normal person in his entire family--or what's left of it. An obsessive father with more than his share of issues, an insane brother who has escaped and is returning home, a multitude of bizarre aunts and uncles, a flaky, irresponsible mother, oh, and a brother and two cousins that he killed.

Frank describes the murders in great detail, and also gives us a serious justification for them, all the while mentioning his sanity like it's a given fact. But compared with what is around him, Frank is far from the worst. Isolated on a small island connected to a town via bridge, Frank doesn't officially exist on record. The island is his hunting ground, and he has grown into a large child, complete with even more elaborate games and rituals he can play and perform alone.

It's difficult and perhaps unnecessary to note the lengthy plot, because this is a page turner, though it doesn't present itself as such right away. This is a careful novel that takes it time and reveals it's secrets at an excellent pace. And it has quite a few surprises for the reader.

Personally, I found this novel to be a tremendous influence on Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho. I can't recall from the interviews I've read from him, but Ellis must have read this book and read it well before or during his crafting of American Psycho. Both novels are in the first-person of someone who is supposedly less than sane, thus offering very graphic yet flatly related and highly descriptive scenes (that naturally wind up shocking us). Both novels offer murdering narrators who share a similar, obsessive style of carrying out their days. (In both books there are scenes of what is pure routine to the narrator--routine but important). In both narrators there is a clear hatred of another people--most notably women. When you read Frank Caulderhame, you can notice the elements that Ellis liked and worked with in Patrick Bateman.

Nevertheless, this is a very fine debut for Banks. It was probably much more shocking back in 1984, but today it retains a distinct voice and all of its scares. Banks has the reader look where most people don't ever want to look, and that's always important and noteworthy if not to everyone's tastes.

Highly recommended modern novel,especially if you like bizarre tales, are an Ellis or American Psycho fan certainly, or just want what has been called one of the "Top 100 Novels of the Century". Believe it.

This book begins like many horror novels. It's a confessional by a teenage boy about murders he committed as a young child. Frank Cauldhame describes his crimes in detail amid explanations for his own apparent psychosis and that of his older brother Eric, who has escaped from a mental hospital. Frank also describes the bizarre liturgy that he devised using carcasses of small animals to project himself off the island where he lives and into the heads of other people, including his brother. There isn't a normal person in his family. His unmarried father is an obsessive/compulsive physician and his absent mother a motor-biking flower child. Early on he proclaims his worst enemies to be "...Women and the Sea. These things I hate. Women because they are weak and stupid and live in the shadow of men and are nothing compared to them, and the Sea because it has always frustrated me...." Several women and men are introduced throughout the novel with appropriate gender commentary on all. Though a page-turner, the novel's ending is a let-down, almost anticlimatic after the grisly descriptions in earlier chapters. It's worth reading, though, and thoroughly chilling.