The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

 


The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks makes for one hellofa compelling read. I finished it in an evening - once started, I simply couldn't put it down.

Gothic horror isn't my taste but there's something about this ghastly, gruesome, twisted tale told by a sixteen-year-old psychopathic sadist that's so extreme a number of scenes could qualify as dark Monty Python sketches.

Since there's a bushel basket full of surprises after the first pages, I'll avoid spoilers by confining my observations to quotes taken from Chapter One -

"I jumped and slid down the slope of the dune into its shadow, then turned at the bottom to look back up at those small heads and bodies as they watched over the northern approaches to the island."

The small heads and bodies belong to animals such as rats, seagulls, rabbits and they are tied to "Sacrifice Poles" by narrator Frank Cauldhame who lives in isolation with his father on a small island over the bridge from a Scottish town. Recall I said Gothic horror back there.

"It crossed my mind that my father looked worried, but he was good at acting and perhaps that was just what he wanted me to think, so deep down I remained unconvinced."

Frank's father is what we might call titched in the head. Ever since Frank can remember his father has been obsessed with the dimensions - height, length, breadth, area, volume - of the various objects in their large old house. He continually demanded Frank go around room to room, recording all measurements in a book. Also, there was that time Dad even had Frank believe that the earth's shape wasn't a sphere but a Möbius strip.

"Eric has escaped from the hospital. That was what Diggs came to tell us. They think he might head back here."

So Frank's father tells Frank during their evening meal. Eric, Frank's older brother, was sent to a mental hospital some years back. There's mention of Eric setting dogs on fire and stuffing worms in children's mouths. Frank's father goes on to tell Frank that he, Frank, should have been the one sent to be locked up in the hospital. Additionally, he tells Frank to keep out of sight of Diggs (the local police officer) - and for good reason: Frank's presence in this world has never been made official, that is, there are no records of Frank's birth.

"That stick is the symbol of the Factory's security. My father's leg, locked solid, has given me my sanctuary up in the warm space of the big loft, right at the top of the house where the junk and the rubbish are, where the dust moves and the sunlight slants and the Factory sits - silent, living and still."

The stick Frank mentions is the walking stick his Father uses to hobble around with. Due to his bad leg, Frank's father can't climb up to the loft where Frank keeps his Wasp Factory. The exact nature of the Wasp Factory isn't revealed in the beginning.

"The only other remnant of our glorious past is the name of Porteneil's hot-spot, a grubby old pub called the Cauldhame Arms where I go sometimes now, though still under age of course, and watch some of the local youths trying to be punk bands. That was where I met and still meet the only person I'd call a friend: Jamie the dwarf, whom I let sit on my shoulders so he can see the bands."

There is the suggestion Frank's father gets his money somehow, ownership perhaps, of this pub. And that bit about Frank having dwarf Jamie sit on his shoulders brings to mind a scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail and also, curiously enough, a happening at a psychiatrist's office in the author's novel, The Bridge. This to say, Iain Banks leavens his fiction with the blackest of humors.

"I hate having to sit down on the toilet all the time. With my unfortunate disability I usually have to, as thought I was a bloody woman, but I hate it. Sometimes in the Cauldhame Arms I stand up at the urinal, but most of it ends up running down my hands or legs."

Frank has a mysterious disability serving as yet another reason he's disinclined to venture very far from the island. And speaking of taking a pee, Frank pisses on the Sacrifice Poles during the day, infecting them with his scent and power. For Frank, all this makes perfect sense according to his mutilated logic.

"I'm too fat. It isn't that bad, and it isn't my fault - but, all the same, I don't look the way I'd like to look. Chubby, that's me. Strong and fit, but still too plump. I want to look dark and menacing; the way I ought to look, the way I should look, the way, I might have looked if I hadn't had my little accident. Looking at me, you'd never guess I'd killed three people."

Mystery, mystery - Frank's little accident. There's another lurking mystery in Frank's life: his Father's den. What does his father do in there? Frank knows his Father has a background in chemistry but what exactly goes on in his den? And, yes, Frank did kill three people, thus we have foreshadowing with a vicious vengeance.

Here's what worked for me while reading The Wasp Factory: imagining sixteen-year-old chubby Frank walking around with the enormous head of John Cleese. The grim, gnarly grotesque has never been more completely different.


Scottish novelist Iain Banks, 1954-2013