I must say that this was an extremely well-written book. The character development within it was truly awesome. The plot was also quite good. However, it was not my particular type of book. In fact, it left me rather disturbed.

The book is centered around two teenagers who are deeply troubled and engage in numerous illegal practices. These include acts such as murder and the torture of innocent animals. To some extent, it reminded me of "Lord of the Flies".

Despite its disturbing nature, I hope that others who read it can still find something to enjoy and perhaps even be blessed by it in some way. After all, different books can have different impacts on different people. Diamondl

Those are my results so far. Three. It's been years since I killed anyone, and I have no intention of ever doing it again.
It was just a bad streak I was going through.

⚠️ Sensitive content warning.
Especially regarding animal abuse.
Therefore, I don't dare to recommend it lightly.
We will encounter a lot of violence and obscene thoughts, with animals being the main focus of his anger.

This is what is called a politically incorrect novel. Its author immerses us in a spiral of evil, violent behaviors, a lot of animal abuse, and several murders that are surprising for their originality.
Of complicated family relationships and vulgar language, but what else could we expect considering they are the mental ravings of a young man, Frank Cauldhame, who clearly isn't in his right mind.
Although he doesn't think so and normalizes everything to the point that it seems mundane.
All of this is narrated in a very peculiar way; meticulous and detailed in terms of descriptions and with a black humor that, despite the atrocities you are reading, you won't be able to hold back and some laughter will escape your control.

The young Frank lives with his solitary and eccentric father in an environment that, on the surface, is idyllic; an island connected by an archaic metal bridge to the town of Porteneil, on the Scottish coast.
Each description of the landscapes has immediately transported me to the place. Beautiful

Parents are the last people who should be allowed to have children.

Samuel Butler,

1835 - 1902, English writer

An ambiguous fable that clearly generates radically conflicting emotions and opinions among readers. A great work or a terrifying failure?

Like many other works that have maintained their individuality, character, and ability to cause disputes over time, the "wasp factory" also leads to the inevitable conclusion: It is not unreservedly recommended to everyone, and surely, once read, it will never be forgotten. It will return to haunt you again and again.

If you want to read an excellent fable about an extremely disturbed teenage mind condemned to family insanity, this book is for you.

Certainly, it is a book for me.

The author managed to put me into the mind and psychology of the protagonist, in an absolutely dizzying view of disorder, psychological horror, mystery, and inevitable consequence.

The "wasp factory" is a surreal journey told by the teenager Frank.

The author puts you through spine-chillingly concise recognition processes within this mind that twists and turns and swims in seas of madness, just like his entire family.

He is a seventeen-year-old hard-boiled murderer, lives with his father, hates his mother, loves his psychotic institutionalized brother, has a unique friend who is a dwarf, and takes painful measures to protect the island where he lives and calls home.

When his brother escapes from the institution

wanting to return home, he is sought as dangerous and the wasp factory is put into operation.

Then, the torment of inner search and revelation begins.

Frank gets closer and closer to the discovery of his true self just as his brother approaches closer and closer to their home.

The wasp factory is an amazing piece of literary creation even as a unique appendix.

From within it, a confluence of emotions and images that accompany the experiences of the characters spills out.

It is a study of the human mind that ends in complete chaos.

Absolutely alone, he struggles to survive the hostile realities of the world and himself.

As we are inside Frank's mind - something that is not safe - we are transported to a strange and hostile environment, forced to face... to understand... to survive...

We know that what Frank thinks is absolutely psychologically compulsive and wrong, however, the way he arrives at abhorrent conclusions has an addictive consequence, following his basic principles to the end.

The fantasies and the incomprehensible hardness that cover the deserts of Frank's mind and world lead us mercilessly to the climax of the story, which is the documented logic of the illogical.

A possible work that with fragments of mental torment creates the terrifying portrait of the abused and alienated youth.

The Wasp Factory tells the disturbing life story of a deranged teenager, Frank Cauldhame, who lives alone with his neglectful alcoholic father.

There are shamanistic rituals, family murders, psychological torture, and religious desecration of animals and insects. All of this leads to an explosion of twisted blood ties gone horribly wrong between two disturbed brothers and their deranged father.

I have very mixed feelings about this book. On one hand, the ideas and concepts behind it are brilliant. It's perfect psychological horror material with deeply disturbed protagonists that could make for great character analysis. It also presents some morbid yet interesting themes about gender, social outcasts, and isolation in toxic environments.

However, I feel like the book fails to really do anything meaningful with these ideas. The characters don't have much depth beyond their psychosis and shock value. The dialogue is dry, and the long descriptions don't amount to anything of substance.

Things that should have been emotionally horrifying and thought-provoking didn't affect me because they were described in such a dry and distant way. The gruesome violence, ritualistic murders, and Saw-like trap devices should have been gripping and terrifying, but they just felt dull.

That being said, the hints left throughout the book about the ending were clever. The ending is set up well, but the overall execution of the plot could have been better. If nothing else, it has a good psychological twist that Freud would probably have loved.

Overall, it's not a bad horror novel, but there's a lot of wasted potential in the way the story and themes are executed. My rating: 2.5/5.

Eric fled the hospital and is on his way back home.

It's a journey filled with mystery and unease. It's all about his younger brother Frank and their father. But what exactly is wrong with Eric? What deeds has he committed?

When Frank starts telling the family story, shivers will undoubtedly run down your spine. It's a tale that involves murders, cruelty against animals, bomb making activities, and much more.

The Wasp Factory holds a secret that begs to be uncovered. Why is it such a perfect metaphor for life and death? And what is Frank celebrating on his strange altar in the barn?

This book is one of the most disturbing I've ever come across, dealing with a horror family. It's well written, insightful, and absolutely terrifying. The smiling child at the hospital is utterly repulsive. The twist at the end is completely surprising.

Definitely not for the faint of heart, this extremely sick and shocking novel contains many disgusting scenes. I couldn't put it down because I was desperate to know the end. It's only for those who are into really weird stuff. While it's hard to recommend, it is very well written.

You know what? Y’all are high. It’s like you’re in some sort of altered state of mind. Maybe it’s due to the influence of something, or perhaps it’s just your natural way of being at the moment. But whatever the reason, it’s quite obvious that you all have a different perspective than usual. Your actions and words seem a bit off-kilter, as if you’re operating on a different wavelength. It’s kind of interesting to observe, but at the same time, it makes me wonder what’s going on in your heads. Are you experiencing something truly amazing, or is it just a passing phase? Only time will tell, I guess.

Dark. Deceptive. Dysfunctional. Disgusting. Devious. These words perfectly describe the world of the protagonist in this story.

I had long wanted to read this book, and my desire grew stronger when I saw it on the list of 1001 books to read before you die. I was forewarned that it could be rather unpleasant at times, but also that it would be rewarding if I persevered to the end. Given that it's a relatively short book at only 192 pages, I simply couldn't bring myself to give up on it.

For the first 30% of the book, I truly despised the protagonist. But then, something strange happened. I suddenly started to like him. I still can't quite put my finger on what exactly changed, but somehow we managed to become "friends." Frank has an older brother named Eric who is hospitalized due to an illness, so Frank and his father are the only ones living in a house far away from the town. What's even more shocking is that Frank has no real identity; to the townspeople, he is just some distant relative. Yes, it's a very dysfunctional family.

At first, Frank seemed like a disgusting and devious teenager to me, with his daily activities being quite repulsive. He was a heartless boy. However, as the story progressed, he shared with us his childhood and, of course, the murders he had committed before he even turned 15. These revelations showed just how deceptive, patient, well-planned, and cruel he could be. And as if things couldn't get any worse, the story took a really dark turn once Eric escaped from the hospital.

Overall, this story provides us with an insight into Frank's mind and the reasons behind his behavior. And then, there was a huge revelation at the end that left me numb for a while. I kept repeating to myself, "No, this can't be true." Frank reminds me of Ronnie from Toy Story 1. Just as Ronnie derived deep satisfaction from breaking and destroying toys, Frank gets a high from killing insects, animals, and humans. Oh boy, this was indeed a wild, wild ride!

I said I was going to listen to it the next time I read it and here I go.

Later....

An intelligent man I know is also an incorrigible literary snob. He firmly believes that the last author of any true literary merit was Faulkner. According to him, anything that has come since must be of poor quality by definition, except for himself, though I suspect I am not. He reads more recent texts out of necessity, such as for school or pedagogical purposes, and his feelings about them are mostly negative.

So he read The Wasp Factory at my request while I listened to it. Then we sat down and had a chat. He was entertained by Frank's tale, but he feels that The Wasp Factory is poorly written. He thinks Banks is just a sensationalist who writes with overdetermination and a tendency towards the melodramatic. It's the only Banks he has read, while my opinion is based on a reading of most of Banks' novels. However, I disagree with my friend, both regarding The Wasp Factory and the quality of contemporary authors.

I am mostly talked out after our discussion the other day, where we both remained unconvinced by the other's arguments. Suffice it to say that I find a lot to admire in the emotional, sometimes passionate, sometimes cold first person revelations of Frank Cauldhame. Banks told the tale in the voice the tale required, and the tale of lies upon lies upon lies upon half-truths is to be much admired as both entertainment and literature. And a world, like the one my friend desires, where Dickens would be at the top-middle-bottom of the reading menu, is a world that would bore me to a coma. Authors like Leguin, Mieville, Banks, Morrison (an author my friend admits approaches quality), Vandermeer, Hope, Katzman, Atwood, Allende, Mitchell, Murakami, Ishiguro, and others I'm not remembering make my imagination tremble.

I'm glad he read the book for me; I am sad he didn't like it more; I surely loved our conversation, though. Books (and the people who love them) really are good, aren't they?

This is the second book I’ve read that belongs to the gothic genre. The first one was Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, a novel first published in 1764 that actually started this genre. Castle is about mysterious events in an old English castle that lead to mistaken identities, causing the characters to kill one another only to discover that they shouldn't have. Fast forward to 1984, 220 years later, came The Wasp Factory which tells the story of a family living on a Scottish island. There are still a series of killings, but the mistaken identity is only revealed at the end. I won't go into that as it's one of the highlights of this novel. All of my Goodreads friends who wrote reviews for this book said they didn't see that coming. My mistake was that I read each of those reviews, even those with spoiler warnings before I finished reading last night. I always do that. I don't care about spoilers since I'm old enough to be surprised, so I just focus on the storytelling. Now I say, this book is an exception. Don't read other reviews of this book before reading it.

This book's main protagonist, Frank Cauldhame, has already killed 3 of his relatives during his boyhood years, reasoning that "it was just a stage I was going through" and has no intention of killing humans again. However, he does kill animals and insects. In fact, he has this Wasp Factory, which is an old clock with a trap behind each number. Frank feeds a wasp into a tube in the center and waits to see which number the wasp will go to, as each number corresponds to a death ritual (such as burning, crushing, drowning, etc.) that he has to perform on an animal he captures on the island. After killing the animal, he hangs its head on a pole and surrounds the island with those poles.

It should be a creepy sight: an isolated island in Scotland with two men, Frank and his father, living alone and surrounded by poles with decaying heads and sometimes bodies of animals. Horror-picture perfect. However, what makes it even more creepy is Banks' attention to detail. He makes sure that his reader knows almost every movement that Frank makes in each of the death rituals. His narrative is full of action verbs that give you the feeling that you are there watching him. For example:

"Anyway, I have no access to it, and have to cart metres of black metal piping back from the town and sweat and labor over it, bending it and cutting it and boring it and crimpling it and bending it again, straining with it in the vice until the bench and shed creak with my efforts. I supposed it's a craft in some ways, and certainly it is quite skilled, but it get bored with it sometimes, and only thinking of the use I'll put those little torpedoes to keep me heaving and bending away."

Banks has all these descriptions of what Frank does to his prey that would surely cause Animal Welfare advocates to protest if done in real life. These rituals are only interrupted by Frank's drinking sprees outside the island with his dwarfish friend Jamie and occasional phone conversations between him and his brother Eric, who has escaped from a mental hospital and has been telling Frank about his visit.
I used to hate this kind of plot. Last year, I rated Bret Easton Ellis's masterpiece, American Psycho, with 1 star. The same rating went to J. G. Ballard's Crash and Marquis de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom. Now, I know better. Not because I'm afraid of being corrected by my GR friends who read my reviews, but I guess that what really makes a good novelist is his ability to evoke emotions, whether positive or negative, from his readers. In my humble opinion, Iain M. Banks belongs to this rare breed of novelists. So, I'm not rating this favorably because I like to torture animals or I love loonies. Rather, I enjoyed his storytelling, his characterizations, and that revelation at the end? It's just amazing. Iain Banks was able to fit that in well without any hint of implausibility.

What a disappointment it is!

Here we have a book that is filled with severely exaggerated characters and blatant stereotypes. These characters meander through a so-called "plot" that is clearly just a hodgepodge of lazy thoughts and ideas that seem to have been inspired by excessive drinking or drug use.

The aim, it appears, is purely to evoke a feeling of “horror” in all of us.

Take, for example, the 16-year-old child in the story who engages in such abhorrent acts as lighting rabbits on fire, burning wasps, and severing the heads off of animals. It's all just drivel.

Honestly, this has to be the most asinine book I've ever had the misfortune to read.

#sorrynotsorry if you happen to love this book. But for me, I simply cannot recommend it.

It fails to offer any real substance or meaningful exploration, and instead relies on shock value and cheap thrills.

There are so many other great books out there that deserve our attention and admiration, and this one just doesn't make the cut.

Wow.

The ending was truly not what I had expected at all. It took me completely by surprise. I had been imagining all kinds of different scenarios as the story unfolded, but the actual ending was something entirely different.

However, as I thought about it more, I realized that it was strangely fitting. It made sense within the context of the story and added a new layer of depth and meaning.

It was one of those endings that makes you go back and reevaluate everything that came before, seeing it in a new light. It was a powerful and memorable conclusion that left a lasting impression on me.

I'm glad that the author chose to end the story in this way, as it made for a more engaging and thought-provoking read.

53rd book of 2020.

My dad, who was standing at the toaster in the corner and patiently waiting for it to pop up, curiously asked me what I was reading at that moment. I told him it was "Wasp Factory". I then went on to read him the blurb.

"Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different 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 I don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through."

'That sounds crap,' my dad said, now busily buttering the popped-up toasted. 'Yep,' I sighed.

I suppose it all comes down to personal preference, as is the case with everything. However, murder in this context really puts me off. Or rather, the way it's presented in the book was enough to almost deter me from reading it, but I did anyway. So, throughout the whole book, I didn't highlight anything as there was no outstanding writing. There were numerous ridiculous and absurd elements, and even the violence seemed excessive and pointless, more so than in American Psycho, which is horrifically overdone but still manages to work. This one, on the other hand, didn't. I think that, to a certain extent, I understood what Ellis was trying to achieve in American Psycho, whereas this book didn't seem to be making any particular point. It was almost just for the sake of the "story" or simply to shock. Although some people might argue the same about Ellis, that's an entirely different debate.

Personally, if you want to go for the absurd and crazy, do it properly and well - like in The Third Policeman. If you want horrific violence and gore, do it properly and well - like in American Psycho.

Overall, this book was uninspiring. It was too ridiculous for my taste, yet not ridiculous enough to truly embrace that aspect. And the dialogue was mostly uninteresting, boring, and at many points, I found myself wondering what the point of some conversations was. How was it relevant? How was it advancing the plot? Who really cared? However, I didn't hate it. The plot twists at the end were WONDERFULLY stupid. I really don't have many positive things to say about it, do I?