The book review thread.

[Mantaspook]

As Stephen King says in On Writing.

 

If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot. There is no way around these two things that I'm aware of, no shortcut.

 

So, with that in mind, here is a thread for book reviews, an opportunity to let your fellow writers know exactly what you think of the latest book you've read, any writing tips you've discovered from it and whether you'd recommend reading it.

 

You don't have to write a twelve page synopsis but a two line review isn't really a review is it? You're a writer, so make it informative and entertaining.

 

Your review can be formatted anyway you like, but make sure the book title & authors name is at the top. Anything else is up to you.

 

If you see a review you disagree with, or would like to post a different review of the same book, please do so. Different points of view are always interesting.

[Mantaspook]

The Wasp factory by Iain Banks

 

This book was recommended to me by a friend that worked in a bookshop. "You'll absolutely love it!" she said, "It's you're kind of book."

 

"What's it about?"

 

"It's about a Scottish kid, he's a psychopath that tortures animals and kills his young relatives!"

 

Why she thought I'd be interested in these subjects was rather puzzling, after all, the last time I counted, all my brothers & sisters were accounted for and so none of the family pets had developed as much as a limp…

 

Nevertheless, I was intrigued so I acquired a copy and sat down to read it.

 

The literary reviews that preceded the novel convinced me that someone had committed a tremendous blunder in the marketing department. Not all of the reviews fell into the usual "This is a tremendous work of fiction" category, indeed, some were positively scathing about the book.

 

This is my favourite one:

 

'A silly, gloatingly sadistic and grisly yarn of a family of Scots lunatics. One of whom tortures small creatures - a bit better written than most horror hokum but really just the lurid equivalent of a video nasty.' -Sunday Expess.

 

But the reviewer at the Mail on Sunday hit the nail a little more squarely:

 

If a nastier, more vicious or distasteful novel appears this spring, I shall be surprised. But there is unlikely to be a better one either. You can hardly breathe for fear of missing a symbol, or fine phrase, or a horror so chilling that your hair stands on end. Infinitely painful to tread, grotesque but human, these pages have a total reality rare in fiction. A mighty imagination has arrived on the scene.'

 

Maybe the marketing department contained a genius by including the negative reviews, after all, anything that got up the nose of the London literati must be worth having a look at. (Iain Banks said in an interview that the reviews were dropped from later editions but so many people complained to him at book signings that he asked the publishers to reinstate them.)

 

The story is told from the first person perspective of 16 year old Frank Cauldhame, he lives with his father on a small Island connected to Scotland by a small suspension bridge.

 

The opening chapter sees Diggs, the local policeman, walking across the bridge. He informs Frank's father that Frank's brother, Eric, has escaped from the lunatic asylum and may be heading back home. Eric's speciality is setting fire to dogs. His menacing approach is used to build tension until he finally arrives at the climatic end of the book.

 

In the meantime, we discover a lot about Frank and the strange rituals he performs, his possessions include the skull of a dog called Old Saul that mutilated him when he was a young child and a huge clock face in a glass box, equipped with booby traps that kill hapless wasps fed into the mechanism by Frank. This is the wasp factory, which Frank uses to predict the future.

 

The ingenious methods Frank uses to kill his siblings are told in with black candour, he kills Blyth by putting a snake in his artificial leg, cousin Esmeralda is dragged out to sea by a kite and Paul is killed by a Second World War bomb that they discover on the beach. Frank takes cover, and then encourages him to hit it with a plank of wood.

 

The chilling reasons for the murders are revealed in a matter of fact way, but he reassures the reader that:

 

"That’s my score to date. Three I haven't killed anyone for years and don't intend to again. It was just a stage I was going through."

 

There is a strong misogynistic theme throughout the book, When you read the antics of Frank's mother you'll see why, but his father is no better and Franks assertion that "your parents really screw you up" is a valid one.

 

To preserve the pleasure of any readers that haven't yet read the book, I don't intend to reveal the incident that tipped Eric into madness, or the dramatic climactic twist.

 

The dry wit of Frank as he goes about his gothic fantasy world killing his relatives was shockingly different, and the many other surreal scenes makes this book extraordinarily memorable.

 

Highly recommended -- as long as you're not of a nervous disposition -- the pace of the story is like a runaway train and the touches of maniacal dark humour really appealed to me. Maybe that's what my book shop friend meant, I'll finish this review now as I have to go and put a Labrador out. Now, where did I put that fire extinguisher…

 

 

Further reading.

 

Cherwell.org review

 

A review in the Guardian.

 

A Previous thread on the SWFG

 

Wikipedia review SPOILER ALERT!

[Tallyman]

The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

 

"For six months I was the best customer the Porteneil Pet Shop had, going in every Saturday to get a couple of beasts, and about every month buying a tube of badminton shuttlecocks from the toyshop as well. I doubt anybody ever put the two together, apart from me.

It was all for a purpose, of course; little that I do is not, one way or another. I was looking for Old Saul’s skull."

 

Frank Cauldhame is not an average sixteen-year-old. Living with his doctor father on a private island connected by bridge to the Scottish mainland and its closest town of Porteneil, and being home taught rather than sent to school, has physically separated him from much of town life. What Frank thinks sets him apart, though, is the memory of a terrible accident that has left him unable to fulfil his potential as a grown man. That and his three murders of course, but he’s not killed anyone for years. He’s over that stage now.

 

He journeys occasionally into town to spend his ‘defence budget’, to rummage around the dump for interesting objects, or to see his one friend, Jamie the dwarf, who sits on Frank’s shoulders in the Cauldhane Arms to get a better view of whatever punk band is being spat at on stage.

 

Frank’s island world is one of self reliance and arcane ritual. He spends much of his time out and about, building complicated dam networks in the sand, checking his Sacrifice Poles and stalking rabbits. Death and destruction are never far from his thoughts, whether dams, rabbits or, indeed, relations, and his capricious outbursts are made more effective by home-made pipe bombs, the ingredients of which he buys in town despite his father having inherited a huge store of explosive cordite which now occupies the locked cellar.

 

Also permanently locked is Doctor Cauldhame’s study, impenetrable despite Frank’s constant vigilance for an unguarded moment when he might gain access. Doctor Cauldhame, his leg damaged when Frank’s mother ran over it with a BSA 500 motorbike, holds both the figurative and literal keys to Frank’s past but seems determined to keep it secret.

 

Frank has his own secrets, though: the old war Bunker in the sand, where his precious objects and substances, carefully collected and venerated, bear witness to his rituals; and, secluded in the attic of the house, the magnificent Wasp Factory itself, where he searches for clues to the future as a sacrificial wasp explores the trapdoors and passageways of his masterpiece on its way to an inevitable, but varied, demise, watched over by the sacred totems of Frank’s formative years: a fragment of tent material, a piece of shrapnel, a snake’s head and a few dog’s teeth.

 

Whilst alone with his father now, Frank has not always been the only child on the island. Apart from his younger brother, Paul, now gone forever, Frank had his older brother, Eric. Eric, the bright, intelligent lad who took himself off to follow in his father’s footsteps and train as a doctor. A promising future beckoned to Eric until a terrible experience breaks his mind beyond repair, leaving him feared among the residents of Porteneil - until the authorities caught up with him - as the man who set fire to dogs.

 

For years, society has been kept safe from Eric, but all that is changing. When Frank hears he has escaped from mental hospital and is on his way back home, a chain of events is forged which leads to an explosive climax as we learn the awful truth about Eric’s experience, Frank’s childhood and the part their father played in it all.

 

Iain Banks’ first novel appeared in 1984 to tremendous critical acclaim. He was hailed as ‘weirdly talented’ with a ‘bizarre fertility’ which grabs your attention and draws you into a story so bizarre and often so disturbing you wonder why you continue reading. And yet his magnetic writing style, his careful drip feeding of one revelation after another, only to be replaced each time with another conundrum, draws you through the book.

 

You should really dislike Frank; he seems at first to have little regard for life other than his own, but his motives always have purpose. With his debilitating injury constantly on his mind, he seems to be searching outside himself for answers, substituting his own power over an island world, where his rules hold sway over life and death, for a future that catastrophe has denied him.

 

This was the first Iain Banks book I read. My copy is dated 1991, so I was hardly discovering new talent by that time or risking my money on an unknown author. I was persuaded to buy it - as many of us are - by friends and by the reviews printed on the cover, and I was captivated by it. Banks’ writing style is deceptively easy, his well calculated turn of phrase seems almost throwaway, and it encouraged me to read and enjoy every other novel he has written since under this name (his science fiction stories are written as Iain M. Banks).

 

I’d urge you to read it. Overcome any initial feelings of distaste for Frank and his strange practices and look deeper into this unusual sixteen-year-old and his quest for answers to his far from ordinary life.

[SarahD]

I love the Wasp Factory, and many other of Iain Banks' novels. He has the most amazing imagination and his novels take you on the path you least expect, or at least tell it in such a way that you are hooked from start to finish.