Book Review: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

'The Wasp Factory' was the debut novel from Scottish writer Iain Banks, who has since enjoyed a successful career both in fiction and science fiction, and is one of Scotland's most important contemporary novelists. The book deals primarily with control and abuse and continues to shock with its portrayal of violence.

Synopsis

The story concerns Frank, a 16-year-old eunuch who lives on a remote Scottish island. His life is spartan, but possessed by a surreal cruelty. The Wasp Factory, the title of the novel, meanwhile, is the kind of thing which might grace a certain type of artists' studios, being an enormous clock face. It has been encased in a glass box, having been salvaged from the local dump. Behind each of the clock's 12 numerals, is a trap which leads to a different ritual death for a wasp which Frank inserts into a hole at the centre of the clock within tubes. According to Frank, the method of death 'chosen' by the wasp (depending on the number to which it crawls), foretells the future. Frank crushes the wasps, burns them and drowns them in his own urine, displaying the kind of mind at work here. The novel occasionally recalls Nick Cave's 'And the Ass Saw the Angel', with its descriptions of an isolated maniac, obsessed with violence, hoarding weapons and, in Frank's case, remembering the murders of three other children.

Themes

Frank's surname reflects his life experience - Cauldhame, being a Scots version of 'Cold home'. His emotionally stunted and outright twisted experiences have created what would appear to be a psychopathic personality, capable only of cold-hearted cruelty. Yet, Banks succeeds as a writer in making us empathise and even sympathise with Frank to some extent. It is a key skill of any writer to make us aware of the truths which lie within all human beings, however, outlandish, depraved or eccentric they may be.

Style and other points

The novel continues to shock first time readers with its bald and matter-of-fact, first person descriptions of murder and cruelty. However, part of the writer's skill here is the way in which we accept the 'normality' of Frank's existence, despite its twisted and ultimately humiliating narrative arc. The wasp Wikipedia entry states that, "Almost every pest insect species has at least one wasp species that preys upon it or parasitises it." Frank is therefore controlling and 'preying' upon one of nature's perfect predators - this is surely a metaphor for the lack of control he has exerted over his own life. In the end, the novel provides us with a quietly hair-raising, occasionally containing black humour and genuinely intelligent fictional insight into what can shape a killer.