Opinions of The Wasp Factory, may have varied widely when it was first published in 1984 – some reviewers described it as “brilliant” while The Times dismissed it as “a joke, meant to fool literary London into respect for rubbish”. However, almost everyone who has read Iain Banks’s first novel seems to agree that it’s dark, disturbing, and not for the squeamish.

 Sixteen year old Frank Cauldhame lives on the coast of Scotland with his eccentric father, who measures the furniture and ensures that Frank knows “the height, length, breadth, area and volume of just about every part of the house”, while awaiting the return of his half-brother, Eric, who’s just escaped from the mental hospital. Violence and a tendency to be cruel to animals and small children seems to be hereditary, as Eric’s insanity leads him to set fire to dogs and stuff handfuls of maggots into the mouths of children, while Frank is preoccupied with his own sinister experiments.

 In terms of plot, most of the novel could be summarised in Frank’s response when asked what he’s been doing recently – “Not a lot. I killed a few rabbits the other day and I keep getting weird phone calls from Eric, but that’s about all”. The Wasp Factory is interesting mostly as an insight into a strange, nightmarish, misogynistic environment, where the greatest threats are “Women and the Sea”. The portrayal of Frank as a superstitious loner, who spends most of his time torturing animals and dispassionately assassinating family members, is the most successful aspect of the novel, more convincing than the slightly uncomfortable blend of horror and comedy. Frank, like Oskar Matzerath in The Tin Drum and A Clockwork Orange’s Alex, is an intriguing, almost likeable anti-hero, even though his claim that all the violence “was just a stage I was going through” doesn’t quite ring true. As Frank does not technically exist because his birth was never officially registered – his father is conducting his own experiment, which is harmful in a different way to Frank’s treatment of the wildlife – he’s free to do whatever he likes. In this way, The Wasp Factory is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies; as well as the insect reference in the titles, they both explore isolated islands and the savagery that takes place when the protagonists are freed from the laws and moral constraints of a normal society.

 I found the ending disappointing, and the twist, while admittedly not predictable, seemed ludicrous. The Wasp Factory sometimes feels self-consciously quirky, the “weirdness” overdone. Eric is little more than a caricature, even if his surreal conversations with Frank are occasionally humorous. To call the Cauldhames “dysfunctional” would be an understatement, and although this is not a novel which ever pretends to be entirely realistic, it often verges on the unbelievable. 

While not as gratuitously nasty as the earlier reviews may imply, the animal cruelty may upset vegetarians – dog-lovers in particular – and the revelation of “what happened to Eric” left me feeling physically sick. However, if you have a taste for the macabre, there are probably worse places to start than The Wasp Factory.