The Wasp Factory Annotated

 My next annotation, The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, is live here!

In more colorful words than the annotation, I thought this book was bad.

I found nothing striking, subversive or even interesting about the main narrator character. Nothing about the circumstances of Frank’s life made me understand or empathize with the cruel violence and psychopathy toward animals and children.

A lot of this book is sold on shock value, but I didn’t find myself ever so repulsed as to come around again to being allured, like a macabre carnival sideshow. And I like shock value. I like John Waters and Pink Flamingos. In Factory I found nothing to latch onto. There’s no je ne sais quoi. I mostly just wanted these characters to get the hell away from me.

It’s bad punk rock, like the Pistols wearing swastikas.

Comments

  1. Erin CataldiFebruary 20, 2024 at 7:53 AM

    Thank you so much for including your personal opinion as well. It legit made me chuckle :)

    ReplyDelete

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