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I know I go on about how wonderful Iain Banks' fiction is, and this, his first novel is as wonderful as his later works. Shorter than the other books I've read, The Wasp Factory also ups the creep factor; it's a little like We Have Always Lived in the Castle with a budding Hannibal Lector as hero.
Frank lives on a remote Scottish island, "hidden" from the real world by his father, who managed to forget to register him legally, so Frank has never been to school and has no National Registry number. ...more
Frank lives on a remote Scottish island, "hidden" from the real world by his father, who managed to forget to register him legally, so Frank has never been to school and has no National Registry number. ...more
Frank lives with his dad on an island. They can get to the nearby town, but since Frank doesn't go to school and his dad doesn't work, they can live very isolated lives. Frank has a vivid, unique, and terrifying perspective on the world. He spends his time torturing and killing things and creating monuments out of their bodies.
I hated this book. Frank is an incredibly unpleasant person to spend time with. Nothing actually happens, beyond a few reveals about his odd family and endless bouts of F ...more
I hated this book. Frank is an incredibly unpleasant person to spend time with. Nothing actually happens, beyond a few reveals about his odd family and endless bouts of F ...more
I would have probably given this a fourth star had another review on goodreads not ruined the ending for me (so stop reading these if you haven't read the book yet). I do like how the author writes, despite the subject. I am an animal lover that is in an especially bad place to be reading about animals suffering right now, after my sweet doggie's recent urgent vet visit that seems to have traumatized me possibly more than her, but I guess I don't "shock" that easily when it comes to fiction. The
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The rambling first-person daily diary of an outwardly-calm but troubled teen, Banks' slim novel was ultimately neither as shocking as the blurb/buzz indicated, nor as disturbingly gruesome as Banks occasionally gets in his sci-fi works. I'm more than fine with the latter (main characters drowning in sewage could be skipped any time), but the former made time in this book pass far more slowly than its scant 200 pages needed to.
On the back of the book and in the first few chapters, Frank breezily ...more
On the back of the book and in the first few chapters, Frank breezily ...more
I read this on vacation--it was one of the books someone else had left at the place we were staying.
Weird, weird book. Entertaining. But one of those books you feel a little strange enjoying.
Weird, weird book. Entertaining. But one of those books you feel a little strange enjoying.
Jan 16, 2008
Colette
marked it as to-read
May 17, 2011
Kate
marked it as to-read
Oct 03, 2011
Esther
marked it as waiting-on-my-shelf
Mar 12, 2013
Ray
marked it as to-read
Aug 07, 2015
Meg
marked it as to-read
Apr 18, 2016
Terri FL
marked it as to-read
Feb 15, 2018
Liz Laurin
marked it as to-read
