(9) IAIN BANKS –

THE WASP FACTORY (1984)

“Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I’d disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.

That’s my score to date. Three. I haven’t killed anybody for years, and don’t intend to ever again.

It was just a stage I was going through.”

Says it all really. I’m a big fan of the importance of first lines or openings in books or stories. They should pack a punch or two – and Iain Bank’s The Wasp Factory certainly does that.

As for the book is about, well, let’s just say it’s one of the strangest coming of age books I’ve read, about a pyschopathic teenager living in a remote Scottish island with some big twists in the tale and not for the faint-hearted – par for the course for Banks, really. The titular Wasp Factory is a weird shamanic divinatory device the protagonist has constructed. Interestingly, it was Banks’ first novel and he wrote it to resemble science fiction – with the island resembling a planet and the protagonist an alien.

POETRY (DRAMA & ESSAYS)

No poetry ranking – apparently he did write some but I haven’t read it. Nothing of note in drama or essays either – I’m not aware of any screen or stage adaptations.

FANTASY & SF (COMEDY)

Banks definitely earns my fantasy & SF ranking for his SF books, most famously his Culture series of novels, although he published them as Iain M. Banks as opposed to Iain Banks.

There are comedic elements in Banks but I wouldn’t rank him as a comedic writer.

RATING: 4 STARS****
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