Aerothorn on 2/10/2006 at 03:14

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YES I GET TO START THE DISCUSSION WOOHOO YEAH!

Wow, I don't even know where to start. I'll just sort of jump around. And as Mr. Stitch said, SPOILERS SPOILERS AND MORE SPOILERS follow so if you haven't finished the book run away now.










So, frankly, I wasn't really expecting to like The Wasp Factory. I have a mixed history of success with literary fiction, and frankly I'm pretty squeamish about graphic violence so the idea of reading a book about a serial killer didn't entirely appeal to me.

But the book ended up being like some sort of ski jump or something. It started out quickly and I got into it fairly fast, for the one thing that lifts it above being just another controversial novel: the narration. It was surprisingly...fun. I'd been expecting some sort of dry Lord of the Flies style writing, but this is written as if the main character might have actually wrote it. It just gives a great sense of the character's internal logic, thoughts, setting. I also liked that (with a few exceptions) it was much more dialogue/thought/action focused than many 'literary' novels - so often I find that they spend 5 pages talking about how the sunrise looks and it bores me to tears.

Anyway, the ski jump analogy – so as it went on I got more and more into it, but then it starts stumbling, and the author’s true identity as a first-time novelist is revealed.

It worked really well showing and not telling, having us see Frank’s daily routines and his thoughts without a “It all started when…” But then it goes and gives us the ‘Frank at 3 years old getting attacked by Old Saul’ bit and it just doesn’t mesh with the rest of the novel. The rest of the novel was believable and low-key, whereas this came off as a cheap attempt at explaining why Frank Was the Way he Was.

Which is the hard part of mystery – mystery makes a novel intriguing but then you have to answer it in a satisfying way, which is tough.

And so after that it continues along, albeit more slowly (since, after it had gone through the motions of explaining Frank’s murders and The Incident, it basically enters “waiting around till Eric arrives” mode). And then we get to the “Why Eric is the Way he Is” passage, and it just goes downhill from there.

First off, as somewhat suspect as I found the Old Saul incident, it bothered me more because it wasn’t as good as what came before, not because it was that bad. But Eric’s Incident was…well….it was just stupid. It was like out of some grade-B horror movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love Evil Dead, but it had no place here.

And this, as far as I can tell, is the author’s main problem – he has to explain why people are the way they are. Personally, I think this is bullshit. I have a lot of issues and personality quirks – I don’t kill people, certainly, but I have plenty of oddities. Can these all be traced back to some single traumatic event? No. Very few things can. People just are the way they are through a complex combination of genetics and environment, and as far as I can tell we are not shaped by a couple big formative experiences but by life itself, 24/7, all the little things combined with the big things. But Banks, for the sake of simplicity or because his editor told him to tie things up neatly or whatever, feels the need to provide a full background for every character. But he can’t do it believably and it hurts the novel a lot. Eric was a super-shining star and then he said some flies in a kid’s brain and he became a raving lunatic psychopath? WHAAAAAAAAAAA

I know, I’m taking way too long to say all this, but I’m too fucking lazy to edit. Maybe next week I’ll have a Director’s Cut of this post for those who can’t read the whole damn thing.

Anyway, after the Eric thing I sort of spiritually gave up on the book, and while there wasn’t anything as bad it did seem it had sealed its fate as a fun novel and not as a believable character portrait.

The other issue I had with it was the ending. I’m not gonna call it a Deus Ex Machina because I’m not a professional literary critic and I have no idea if it is or not, I just think it sucked. It broke complete tone. Frank learns he’s female, and then his voice is switched out for Bank’s, who (through him) explains why he is a psychopath and how it all stemmed from the inability to be an adult and blah blah blah blah blah. I could go quote it here but I don’t want to, and presumably you know what I’m talking about. It’s like he pegged a literary analysis of the character to the end of the book and it just sucks. And then he goes to the sleeping Eric and holds his head. Ahhhhh. Isn’t that sweet. And then it says “JUST TO REMIND YOU I’M A CHICK” and then it ends.

Sorry if I sound really negative, the ending just disappointed me. But overall I quite liked the book, particularly the first parts. The premise had so much potential to be this over-the-top slasher flick of a novel, or a melodramatic rumination on “but on the inside, aren’t we all serial killers?” but it wasn’t, it was low-key and, uh, I suck a describing positive things. Basically, I liked it.

The other thing is, before I got most of the way through the book and re-focused on the parts I’ve covered so far, I was planning on writing a big post on how apparent it is that the main character has either Asperger’s or OCD – which is interesting since Asperger’s was not at all popularized at this point (I’m not even sure if it had been named as such yet). Of course Aspies existed, people just didn’t call them that and there wasn’t as much awareness on the specifics of the condition. But the author writes as if he knows it like the back of his hand. The main character displays obvious OCD tendencies, of course, but alongside that he displays a range of Aspergian traits so I don’t think it’s just OCD. That said, it doesn’t really matter in any way – diagnosing the mental disorder of a fictional character is itself a little obsessive. I just locked onto this because earlier this year I read The Speed of Dark, supposedly about an autistic person, and I just didn’t find his character that believable – it felt like a normie acting like they knew what it was like to have Asperger’s, and this felt so much more true than that, even though it doesn’t seem it was intentional.

Well, this post is way too big; I’ll post any other scattered thoughts I have later. Weeeeee!

Aja on 2/10/2006 at 04:40

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Aerothorn actually summed up my feelings on the novel, though perhaps in more words than I would've used ;)

I enjoyed the beginning. Right away we have a believable character, especially in the way that Frank justifies his bizarre behaviour. I never felt a great deal of sympathy towards Frank's victims, mainly because the book is written from the perspective of someone who isn't affected either. In that sense, the book is successful. As a character, I ended up liking and pitying Frank more than anyone.

Aero's right though - too many bizarre events jar the narrative. Castration by dog, wax penises, cordite in the basement, bombs on the beach, flying off on a kite... are these real events or strange hallucinations? Eric's scary part was absolutely gripping to read, but I was half-expecting there to be wasps inside the baby's head, because at least that way there'd be some connection.

I was predicting that Eric would be the girl. The ending was a total surprise, but a very contrived one. Actually, I guess what bothered me the most about the ending was that Banks wrote his own little miniature essay, analyzing the motives and message of his book. Especially since, after that, there's really nothing left to be said, which brings me to my biggest complaint about the book.

What the hell is it about?

It does provide an interesting and possibly accurate picture of a disturbed mind, but the sheer fantasy of the whole thing kind of negates it as a viable study of behaviour. It's like, "oh, well, dad was trying to turn me into a boy, so no wonder I hate women" Irony. See how this is applicable to gender study? If you do, please enlighten me. All we have is a pack of strange characters, who, granted, do have motives for their actions, but motives that are so manufactured that I'm not sure if this is a study in anything at all.

Also, that bit about how we're all in our own wasp factories was retarded.

So, I'm coming down a little harsh, because I did enjoy the read. I like Banks' style; the individual sections were very well written, and often impossible to put down. As a whole, there is lack of plausibiltiy, especially since it starts off so interestingly. I would call it a good first effort, but the last book club book I read (Life of Pi) was, for me, more entertaining.

I actually hope the book club can prove me wrong here... let's have some insight! :D

Fingernail on 2/10/2006 at 10:01

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The ending REVELATION was a bit too speedily done and as Aerothorn suggested, "this is why everything that happened happened so there, the end."

Aside from that, it was pretty enjoyable. I have no idea how you could classify it as horror particularly though, there was only really one moment that made me shudder at all, and it was disgust rather than terror.

The characterisation was pretty good, and the general atmosphere was very well sustained but it just felt like he had some good ideas for characters and environments and just tacked a far weaker plot on top to give the novel some structure; otherwise it would remain simply internal natterings of Frank, which, whilst entertaining, might not a novel make.

The description of being drunk was very well done in my opinion. Top marks there.

Paz on 2/10/2006 at 12:24

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I don't think there'll be much opposition to the assertion that the ending was posted directly from Planet Terrible, so I'll waste no more time on that.

My reading was coloured slightly by my early theorising that "Eric" only existed inside Frank's wonky brain. I decided this after the first (excellent) phone conversation, because it seemed as if Eric being "away" was a perfect vehicle to allow this twist to develop. From that point onwards, I kept looking for clues to support the idea - I'd constructed a version of events where "Eric" was the irrationally violent aspect of Frank's personality, in contrast to the rather cool, collected serial killer persona we see throughout most of the book.

When people were speaking about "Eric" being away, or returning, they were meaning that the signs were there that Frank was having another funny turn. He was gonna start torching puppies again. His father realises this when he overhears Frank talking to "Eric" in an incident which is unseen to the reader as it preceeds the first chapter.

Unfortunately, of course, my theory was utterly wrong. I'm not sure which chapter makes it completely unsustainable, but there was a point where I just had to abandon it. That made the ending even more disappointing, because I thought my version was probably better (or at least more workable).

Meanwhile, I was kept entertained by the aforementioned phone conversation dialogue - which is basically hilarious - and Frank's wacky antics (which, due to the writing style, also somehow become hilarious). Normally I'd be pretty appalled by a character in a book setting light to innocent rabbits, but Frank's world had already been sufficiently constructed by this point that I didn't just think "well .. fair enough", I found it a bit of a giggle too. Not because the act WAS funny, but because the atmosphere of deathly black humour is so cleverly built up that eventually all that stuff seems amusing. Letting your cousin float away to her death on a massive kite? How can that be anything but chucklesome!

The voyages inside Frank's head were also generally well done, as mentioned by others. I especially liked the "person as a nation state" pondering that he does at the beginning of "The Bomb Circle". There was a sense of Banks himself coming through a little bit there, I thought.

Much of the setting was very believable too. A crumbling old house belonging to the decaying, barmy strand of an ancient minor aristocracy (at least, that was the impression I got), forced outside the boundaries of normal society and exiled to their tiny island. Even when "normal society" is a grey, dour Scottish village with pretty much nothing going on. It reminded me of those grim films you get about Pit Villages and stuff (not the ones where they become stripping brass band players and live happily, the ones where they get black lung and die). There was a touch of The Wicker Man too (the original one, obviously). Anyway, I thought this was all an important breeding ground for Frank's mania.

Err .. yeah, that'll do for now. A great choice for this little geeky club!

Aerothorn on 2/10/2006 at 17:13

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Yeah, see, I was too lazy to go and re-skim the book to find the specific passages of contention but I remember that being the one where I audibly groaned. It made me think of the line from Psychonauts "Because, in the end...aren't we all just dogs playing poker?". But of course that was parody, and Banks was trying to be serious.

And as for the believabilty of the events, I didn't have a problem with most of them - the murders were believable enough, for instance. Okay, yes, it sure is convient that there's an unexploded bomb lieing on the island and that Paul for some reason wants to hit it (I can't recall wanting to smack random things with sticks when I was 5), but as noted, Frank is just so well-written it makes it seem believable.

What I didn't find believable was not the events themselves - it's fully possible that a bulldog can bite off your testicles, for instance - but the events as explanation for the behaivors of the present. Realistically they'd be formative experiences but one of many, and not a direct link to every aspect of Frank's personality today. People don't become abusers because they're dad hit them once - it's generally because they were abused throughout their entire childhood.

And yeah, that whole 'Frank the Nation' was probably my favorite part.