I love Iain Banks’ Science Fiction Culture novels, so at some point in the past, I picked up his debut novel The Wasp Factory, released in 1984. It’s not my usual genre (sort of a psychological horror, I think? It’s somewhat hard to pin down), so it’s languished on my shelves for quite some time. I’ve been making a concerted effort to cut down on my physical TBR this year (down to 300ish from 400ish at the beginning of January!) and this is a short book, so I figured I could knock it off in a couple of hours.
The novel is narrated by Frank, a sixteen-year-old living in 1980s Scotland. Frank is a somewhat disturbed individual, who freely admits to the reader that he murdered three other children while still a child himself. We follow Frank for about a week or so in his life, his interactions with his father and brother, and the other inhabitants of the town where he lives.
This was a deeply uncomfortable book—there’s graphic depictions of animal cruelty and murder of children, so it’s definitely not something I would recommend to the faint of heart. Frank is undeniably a terrible person, and his inner monologue is frightening in his hate and depravity. Based on the subject matter, I’m not sure that I can say that I enjoyed my time reading this, but it was compelling nonetheless. The writing was excellent, and there are a few moments of levity that contrast the rest of the novel that I appreciated. The ending is somewhat abrupt, but this is the kind of novel that, for better or for worse, is likely to stick with me for a while.