Book #6 for 2023: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I picked this up, having read good things about it, and really enjoyed it.
The narrator is sixteen-year old Frank, who at one point tells the reader:
"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".
The book is told half in flashback, so goes back to explain the three murders that Frank committed as a child. The book has another subplot involving Frank's brother Eric, who has escaped from an asylum, and is evidently coming back to the family home. Eric spends a lot of the novel making unsettling phone calls to Frank.
There are several other flashbacks, and at times they get very disturbing and macabre, including a gruesome scene involving a dog, and an even more shocking moment that explains why Eric had a breakdown.
There is also a "wasp factory", whose purpose I didn't really understand until near to the end, except that Frank seems to constantly put wasps into it, which then die.
I enjoyed reading Frank's narration, and the constant presence of Eric on the other end of the phone gave an increasing sense of menace. There also seemed to be an extended metaphor about being cut off from society, mostly from Frank living on a house that's on a remote island. I think this is a book that I would need to re-read just to see any clues to the novel's surprising plot twist that I didn't pick up on, but I really enjoyed this book. It made me realise that I've not read enough of Iain Banks' work.
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I wondered if this counted as a "crime" novel for the Calendar of Crime, and decided it probably did, with its accounts of three gruesome murders.
I wasn't sure what the criteria for "year of the rat" was, but seeing as this was published in 1984 (year of the rat) that it would probably suffice.
1. January in the title
2. Author's birth month
3. Primary action takes place in this month
4. New Year's
5. Other January holiday
6. Original publication month
7. Book title has word starting with J
8. Snow, winter scene, top hat, party scene on cover
9. Year of the Rat
10. Snowbound country house mystery