Thursday 19 January 2012

The Wasp Factory Review


Author: Iain Banks
Publisher: Abacus; New Ed edition (1 April 1992)
Genre: Gothic
Rate: 5/5 - I loved it!
Get it here: Amazon UK & US, Kindle UK 



The Wasp Factory Review

‘I had been making the rounds of the Sacrifice Poles the day we heard my brother had escaped. I already knew something was going to happen; the Factory told me.’ Quote from the book.

'The Wasp Factory' is Iain Bank's debut novel and it is by all means not for the faint-hearted! The 16-year-old narrator Frank lives on a remote Scottish island with his father, where he spends his leisure time torturing animals. The novel is considered an attack on the romanticised peaceful Scotland as Frank disturbs this peace by flooding and blowing up animal habitats, murdering people, and engages in perverse, almost religious, rituals with the ‘wasp factory’. A torture chamber for wasps, that guides him through life. The novel is a bildungsroman as we follow the events surrounding Frank.

Mr Banks keeps the readers caught at the very first line, as quoted above, several things are going on.  Using his wit Banks has created a narration so gruesomely detailed as it is comically evoking. Creating a thoroughly psychopathic character that the readers come to like, even sympathise and empathise with him, when he wilfully murders younger members of his family and tortures animals, is quite the trick.

It is a brilliant page-turner, and we are left fearing what happens next. With an outstanding unpredictable ending, this book will stay with you long after the last sentence. I urge you to pick this book up, you will not regret it.

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