Perhaps it is all a joke, meant to fool literary London, terrified of seeming prudish, into respect for rubbish.
Books The Wasp Factory
- Author
-
Iain Banks
- Year
- 1984
- Publisher
- Macmillan
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-
…a Gothic horror story of quite exceptional quality. It is macabre, bizarre and—toward the end—impossible to put down. There is a control and assurance in the book, and originality rare in established writers twice the author’s age.
Andrew Gimson
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Frank’s “voice” is the important thing, and here too Banks must have a literary precedent in mind, and one appropriate for the theme of “horror”. Frank’s father might make us think of the original twisted amateur scientist, Victor Frankenstein.
Our Thoughts
Banks' dark, surreal humour saves The Wasp Factory from its own absurd plot.
— Lily Power
Frankenstein
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
White Noise
The Road
The Buddha of Suburbia
One Hundred Years of Solitude