The WASP FACTORY: A NOVEL Review

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(More customer reviews)This book was recommended to me by a friend, who said he loved its wicked sense of humor. Named one of the best 100 novels of the last century by The Independent, "The Wasp Factory" certainly seems to have a strong cult following, as most of the highly favorable reviews here attest, but I find all this rather baffling. While not by any means a terrible book, Iain Banks's first novel is simply too messy and amateurish to qualify as a great novel. First of all, enjoying this book requires that one have a high tolerance for detailed descriptions of cruelty to animals, including the mutilation and immolation of many rabbits and dogs. Some of the violence in the book is actually quite funny, and can be enjoyed on a certain macabre level -- such as the narrator's description of an uncle's suicide gone terribly wrong -- but most of it is simply too dark and literally described to be laughable. It often seems that Banks is trying to shock without really thinking of the larger implications of any of the book's violence. While I read "The Wasp Factory," I kept hoping for a denouement that would tie everything together and create a resonance that the bulk of the novel lacked. Unfortunately, all I got was a transparent twist that lent nothing to the events that had preceded it, and seemed designed only to shock. In truth, the novel's twist is no more profound than the climax of the slasher film "Sleepaway Camp." I got the feeling that Banks really felt he was creating something on the level of an O. Henry story, but what he ended up with is a book that reads like a juvenile poison pen letter to all of humanity, and little more.

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