The Wasp Factory

Title: The Wasp Factory
Author: Iain Banks
Published: 1985
Genre: Mommy I'm scared disturbed...
Pages: 244



There's this guy, Frank, 16 years old, who lives with his rather odd father on a small island in Scotland. His older brother Eric is in a looney bin, and his younger brother Paul is dead. Because Frank killed him. Him and two other kids, but that was just a phase he was going through. Eric likes to set dogs on fire, and guess what, he just broke out of the bin and is coming home!

Queasy book. Really queasy. I almost gave up when there was just cruel, pointless violence towards animals, but even though it disturbed me more than many things I've ever read, Mr. Banks' (Banks's? I never remember/know...) writing keeps you going. There's dark humour to all of it, and I can honestly say I had no idea what would come next. There are a few pages of critic's comments from newspapers and such in the beginning. Can't say critic's praise, since most of them say Don't read this book. No, really, don't. I, for myself, might add, that it is a very bad idea, I repeat, VERY. Bad. Idea. To eat while reading the chapter What Happened to Eric. Oh. My. Good. Giggly. Googly-eyed. Gollum. I couldn't even read all of it.  I had to peer at it through my fingers, taking in a few words at a time, trying hard to keep dinner down. And that visual will haunt me.

But still. All that, and I couldn't put the book down. I read half of it in one sitting, all of it within three days or so.

Damn. I need a children's book or something next...


"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. The Wasp Factory is part of the pattern because it is part of life and - even more so - part of death. Like life it is complicated, so all the components are there. The reason it can answer questions is because every question is a start looking for an end and the Factory is about the End - death, no less. Keep your entrails and sticks and dice and books and birds and voices and pendants and all the rest of that crap; I have the Factory, and it's about now and the future, not the past."