The Wasp Factory

Dark, violent, and disturbing story, told in a first-person point of view, like a diary.

This reminded me a lot of We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Like in that book, the family has mostly died off due to tragedy and are able to maintain an existence away from most people thanks to property owned (in this case a small island) and an independent income. Both stories have a psychopathic, murderous teenager at their center and in both books the main characters are ostracized from the rest of the town due to the actions of a family member. Heck, there's even a fire in the climax of both books.

There's a twist in Wasp Factory as well and it still has me thinking. I can't quite figure out the point of it, but I will admit I didn't see it coming. Terrible things happen to Frank, and he does terrible things. I'm not convinced that the tragic "maiming" that happened to Frank justifies him being the monster he is. Once we find out the truth, it doesn't really matter that it was child abuse instead of a random accident. Unclear if there is a statement being made here about gender or the assumption of gender. That's okay. I don't like messages and morals in my stories.

I do wonder why it is that Franks's brother Eric tortures dogs when Frank is the one with reason to hate them. Frank certainly tortures other creatures but objects to Eric's chosen victims.

So yes, there are a lot of things unanswered here. I'm not looking for a book to answer all questions posed. I'm fine with leaving things ambiguous and open to interpretation. Definitely an interesting book to read if you like psychological horror stuff.

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.

Inversions begins with an introduction to Iain Banks where the claim was that he came to “controversial public notice” with this book. I was curious, and well yep, I get it, The Wasp Factory is macabre and gruesome. I wasn't sure if I hated or loved this book until I got to the very end, and I am glad I made it the entire way. This novel is brilliantly self aware, and the violence (gruesome and excessive) that made this book controversial is ultimately the lingua franca by which this book discusses trauma and identity. This book knows it is ridiculous and the gruesome violence is couched in humor, (Iain Bank clearly revels in the absurdity and horror) but for all the absurdity it is very much a controlled burn.

This is a story of a self obsessed 16(17?) year old homicidal maniac living his days quietly torturing the animals of the Scottish Island that he and his father have made their home. Frank kills animals in odd rituals and false wars as he operates his grand death machine, the Wasp Factory, a mechanism that Frank uses as his metaphysical guide. Along the way we learn about the factory, the relatives Frank murdered in his childhood, and the disability that consumes Frank's life. Frank's eldest brother, institutionalized after setting the town's dogs on fire, escapes, and makes his way home down the Scottish coast leaving behind a trail of ashes and half eaten remains.

My approach to this novel was largely blind and I think any potential reader should stop here and pick the book up because it is worth reading. If you enjoyed Choke by Chuck Palahniuk I think this will be right up your alley.

As I have read through Banks' work I have consistently picked up on his inability to write a female character, and generally the way his stories tend to shove the ladies into the background. This consistent loose thread in his writing made the ending of this novel a monster of a surprise to me. Frank turns out to be Frances, born a girl and experimented on by their father after a severe genital mauling by the family dog. Banks loves his platitudes and his Freud and I disappointedly noted the dogma present in the subtext, alongside Frank's patent hatred of women (attributed to his mother's abandonment). It seemed to me that the book was taking any chance it got to take shots at women, and alongside the essentially all-male cast I was starting to draw conclusions from this first work about why women seemed absent and muted in the world of The Culture.But wow that ending. I loved Frank's closing thoughts concerning the trajectory of his life, the Freudian reading of penis envy and the realization of his replacement of sex with violence; his all too clear and simple exaggeration of "Man as Death" and his violent tendencies as an expression of masculine identity. The absence of women in this novel serves only to highlight these character deficiencies, their exclusion becomes a central plot element. The contrast between egalitarian ideals concerning gender and Frank's excoriation of women only made the ending all the more absurd. In a way everything becomes a moot point, Frank's plight upending the foundations of all the (now shown to be ridiculous) notions they once had.