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The Wasp Factory

By Iain Banks

(98)

| Paperback | 9780684853154

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Book Description

Meet Frank Cauldhame. Just sixteen, and unconventional to say the least:

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 Continue

Critics

Born free

Of course Iain Banks wanted to give us some horror. The infamous maggots scene in The Wasp Factory - explaining just why the narrator's brother, Eric, goes "mad" - is prepared with all the machinery of a melodramatic revelation. (The horror for first ... (read full critics)

guardian.co.uk published on Fri, 24 Sep 2010

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Frank, a physically deformed young man in his mid-teens, lives with his father - an eccentric man to say the least - on a remote Scottish island. Frank is not your run-of-the mill adolescent; he announces from the outset that he is a three times fami ... (read full critics)

thebookbag published on Tue, 14 Sep 2010

8 Reviews

2 people find this helpful

Dark, sick and twisted, this is the book that launched me on Iain Banks. I'd have to say that none of his following novels had quite the same impact on me, but I've read most of them all the same.

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peripatetic said on May 22, 2006 | Add your feedback

I'm not sure about this book. I was certainly expecting more. The last chapters were very good but the first and central ones were quite slow and rich in descriptions which didn't really caught my interest.
The end was quite surprising, too. Not a bad story at all, at the very end, but not as distur ... (continue)

I'm not sure about this book. I was certainly expecting more. The last chapters were very good but the first and central ones were quite slow and rich in descriptions which didn't really caught my interest.
The end was quite surprising, too. Not a bad story at all, at the very end, but not as disturbing and enthralling as I had expected it to be.

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Graziana Giotta said on Nov 12, 2011 | Add your feedback

I read this strange novel when I was 16 years old, and it really impressed me if I still remember after so long! It is actually quite disturbing, though.

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Tabathua said on Feb 20, 2010 about the Hardcover edition | Add your feedback

The only banks book I have read, tried others but abandoned as they not as good. Brillant and dark.

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Ebony Rose said on Jan 11, 2010 | Add your feedback

Killing Jar Good - Yum!

This is a disturbing look inside the mind of a disturbing personality. It was quite easy and fun to read, though. Banks uses inventive language and point-of-view narrative for his début novel. It impressed mostly, but some critics were unimpressed.
If you can enjoy a tale of a multiple murdere ... (continue)

This is a disturbing look inside the mind of a disturbing personality. It was quite easy and fun to read, though. Banks uses inventive language and point-of-view narrative for his début novel. It impressed mostly, but some critics were unimpressed.
If you can enjoy a tale of a multiple murderer, a sociopath, a gangly young teenage killer, then you might enjoy this little book. Since its publication Ian Banks has proved himself an author worthy of respect over and over again, and there is always something about reading a daring first novel of a now-famous author...

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Ramnagel said on Jun 14, 2009 | Add your feedback

Feel like wandering around on a windy Scottish island? Dodging boobytraps and loonies? This is the place for you.

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Sengaia said on Apr 27, 2009 | Add your feedback