Group Read: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

This thread is for the upcoming read of The Wasp Factory, the debut novel by the late Iain Banks, which will begin in early July. I'll probably start reading it on July 5th or 6th, but feel free to start whenever you like.

Participants:

Darryl (kidzdoc)
Paul (PaulCranswick)
Jim (drneutron)
Cathy (ccookie)
?Ellen (EBT1002)
Katie (katiekrug)
?Alex (roundballnz)
Richard (richardderus)
Peggy (LizzieD)
Kathy (UnrulySun)
?Bonnie (brenzi)
Jim (drneutron)
Madeline (SqueakyChu)
Dee (Deedledee)
streamsong

Darryl - I am in for this one as Iain Banks deserved a lot more credit for the scope of his imagination whilst he was with us.

Here is my cover:

Welcome, Paul! This will be the first book I've read by Iain Banks, so I'm looking forward to it.

Thanks for posting the cover of your book. I've posted my cover in message #1, and I would encourage everyone to post a cover of your copy if it is different from any of the ones currently listed.

I'm in.

I just had to give my copy back to the library as it was due before July starts. Sigh. I've put it on hold again and will hopefully get it again before the end of July!

Thanks for posting the thread, Darryl!

I'm in, too. I received The Wasp Factory last year from Ellen as part of Mark's Christmas swap.

I am tentative ..... depends whether i finish my current door stopper

Oh why not? I haven't read it in at least 20yrs.

In! This will be my first non-scifi Banks.

I'm following along with you guys as a refresher... Read it 2 years ago and while my review at the time was a bit wonky, I remember enjoying it.

Welcome, everyone! I'm glad to see so many participants for this group read.

I am going to try to join. I've wanted to read it ever since I read Geek Love and someone suggested that this one was just as over the top/bizarre. I may not have the book until later in July.

So my library has only one copy and it's in Korean. I checked Overdrive - nope. I can get a copy on iBooks on or around July 2... This is starting to become a quest!

I'm in. I have my copy.

Great! Welcome Bonnie, Jim and Madeline.

I just put a hold on the library copy, should be able to start reading it next week.

Welcome, Dee!

I've got a copy requested through ILL, too.

I'm feeling a little squeamish about this one, though. Some of the reviews refer to torture of children and animals .......

>19 streamsong: - Yes, I've heard it's a bit grotesque/gruesome in parts...

I've seen it compared to Geek Love which I read earlier this year and found absolutely freakish.

I have a friend, Nulla, who says that there are LOTS of ghastly issues to discuss. In fact, she may lurk or speak. I think I'd better get busy before you have all read it and moved on.

I finished the book this morning and will write a review tomorrow. I will most likely be panning the novel unless I have a complete change of heart.

I finished the book today and loved it! Sorry, Bonnie. I do like "weird". :)

I can't wait to hear all of you discussing it in detail later.

Well, I may just have to go buy a copy; (this skinflint would much rather borrow the book from a library but my home library doesn't have it, and my *other* (big-city) library has me on a waiting list. I really want to read along with you, so I might just have to pay a visit to a bookstore (yeah, like that would be a bad thing!) 8>)

Karen O.

Bowing out ended up loaning my copy to my mum - also had not read any Banks despite my Brother & me being huge fanboys .....

I'm in on the read. About halfway through, enjoying the weird!

Sorry, guys - I set it aside today with no immediate plans to pick it up again. I usually don't mind weird, and I'm not squeamish - I just didn't care about anything that was going on. And since I have really limited reading time, I decided not to spend it reading about miserable people doing miserable things that I couldn't even get upset about.

Maybe one day it will claw itself back onto the TBR. I did peak at the end, though - wow!

I'm glad to be done with this book, which I described in my review as being one of the most depraved, nauseating and meritless books I've read in a long time. It earns a generous two stars from me.

Darryl - So you're not sure then, mate? hahaha.

I don't think that it was totally devoid of merit but it was certainly depraved.

I'm with you Paul. . . Just glad it didn't take long to get through!

So in agreement with Darryl , Katie and Brenda. The problem with writing a book like this, that goes so against the moral standards of human beings is that you need a touchstone, something that people can lean against to know that things will be ok. This book needed a sympathetic narrator.

I just finished last night, and I fall in the camp of "liked it" -- although in this case, "liked it" means it held my attention and made me think, even if I'm not quite sure yet what to make of it.

One of the things I thought about was Bonnie's point about "touchstones." I've been on a crime-fiction binge and have been thinking about this a lot anyway: how do you maintain a reader's engagement with a book full of reprehensible characters?

A sympathetic narrator or viewpoint character can be helpful, but I'm not sure it's needed. As a counterexample Richard III comes to mind. Obviously Banks is no Shakespeare, but like Richard, Frank is imaginative and articulate. Like Richard's political plots, Frank's rituals are morbidly fascinating. And as in Richard III there's no need to let us know things will be ok because clearly they won't be, at least not until our viewpoint character is cleared from the stage.

In the absence of sympathetic connections to characters I need to feel that the author has something to say. I got that feeling from TWF, though the messages weren't always clear.

I have to say I'm with katiekrug, I've been trying to get into this book but I just can't.

When I read The Wasp Factory, I liked it. As in, I felt enriched for having read it. The characters are not sympathetic in the traditional way, but it did make me think about the way we treat (or don't) children with psychological issues.

So now I'm reading it. I'm disgusted and can read only 20 or 30 pages at a time, but I'll certainly finish it - and for a bit I doubted my ability to do that.
Frank is scary, but - I don't know "but" what. So I keep reading.

I'm also about 50 pages in. I was very hesitant about reading this book (post 19) and so far I'm enjoying it more than most of the other readers.

There is a lot of sly, macabre humor: His uncles with their botched suicide attempts (aw c'mon!). That was an interesting bit because he started with saying three of his relatives died in strange ways and then described two. Read on, read on!

Frank is a unreliable narrator, no doubt--one of my favorite devices.

What's real? What's not real?

The rabbit attacked him? Must have been a sabre toothed rabbit that escaped from the good Mr Python. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcxKIJTb3Hg

He found an adder in a bunker in Ireland. What's the range of adders? Didn't St Paddy take care of that little problem in Ireland? It's not like you can go to the pet store and buy one.

This kid has a scary streak, no doubt. But will it tip over into reality? So far I'm not buying what he's selling.
.

>37 streamsong:: I'm pretty sure this takes place in Scotland, and on an island off its coast. There is an adder native to Scotland, but as far as I know no commando bunnies.

I suspect the Scottish setting may be important. Banks was Scottish and politically active, and the text explicitly invites political interpretation.

Yup, you're right about the Scotland. My bad. I'm as unreliable as Frank is. ;-)

I'd really be interested to hear the political interpretation.

I'm in the group that enjoyed reading this book. I was wondering, though...

What make a book so offensive that it either makes you stop reading it or heavily contributes to your "dislike" because of those "offenses"? Would an "offensive" book ever have literary merit? Could we count The Wasp Factory as an offensive book with literary merit?

>39 streamsong:: I'd really be interested to hear the political interpretation.

Yeah, me too. I'm afraid my knowledge of Anglo-Scottish relations is strictly Hollywood -- Braveheart and Rob Roy -- so I'm bound to miss most topical references and to misinterpret those I catch.

When I say that the text explicitly invites political interpretation, I have a couple passages in mind, one where Frank equates persons with countries, and another where he ponders how the sanity of politicians lies in convincing others to perform their madness.

Several other things suggest to me that Banks has Anglo-Scottish politics specifically in mind. There's the two brothers growing up together on an island realm that seems to operate on rules independent from those of the mainland; there's Frank's game of tying two birds together to watch them fight; there's the pub in town named after a Scottish national hero.

The strongest hint about political meaning for me comes at the end, and you said that you're only fifty pages in so I don't want to give too much away. So vaguely I'll say that one might interpret Frank's violence and myth-making as a misguided attempt to live up to a false mythology of manly warrior-heroes. Braveheart and Rob Roy come to mind.

I'd love to hear others' takes on this.

While I'm throwing out references I don't quite understand, here are a couple more:

Paul. Banks seems to want us to think of the apostle-- he has Paul born on the same day that Old Saul dies. But what's the significance of Frank killing St. Paul?

Blyth & Esmerelda. I think it's interesting that Frank's first human victim is a disabled person killed in the act of bell-ringing, and that his last victim is named Esmerelda. This seems to be a Notre-Dame de Paris reference, but its significance is lost on me.

I'm finding this to be a compelling read. Frank is a carefully depicted sociopath. There is certainly no sympathetic narrator, but I don't see the need for one. I definitely don't get all of the literary and potentially Biblical references. I'm only 45 pages into it, so I'm still reserving judgment.

If you want to try a book where a sympathetic narrator can make a difference when outrageous immoral activity goes on I suggest Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. Shocking as the premise of the book is, it was absolutely unputdownable.

I'm not sure that "like" is a word I'll ever apply to this, but I'm certainly not sorry to be reading it. I note the allusions in passing like Saul/Paul (I totally missed a bell-ringing/Esmeralda connection) and have no idea what to do with them. I guess we could get into pre-conversion/post-conversion business with Saul and Paul, but I still don't get any forwarder. What I think about as I read - and now I'm in chapter 7, "Space Invaders" - is what a monster the father must be to have two such deeply disturbed children. And I think how frightened Frank must be at his core to have developed such a monstrous magical system of control with himself as high priest and warrior.

^ Well-said, Peggy. I am captivated by the complexity of Frank's sociopathy along with his intense magical thinking and compulsive control over trivial details.

And yes, "like" might not be the right word, but "engaging" is a word I will certainly use.

There are several interesting interviews online with Iain Banks discussing the Wasp Factory:

I listened to this one and found that Banks does not think Frank is an unreliable narrator--except perhaps about his religious rites.

I also found two other points interesting; that Banks did no research on mental health issues and that part of his motivation for writing this was writing a book that would sell.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/133_wbc_archive_new/page2.shtml

and Banks' description of his aim in the book from this link:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jul/12/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianrevie...

"Beyond that, it was supposed to be a pro-feminist, antimilitarist work, satirising religion and commenting on the way we're shaped by our surroundings and upbringing and the usually skewed information we're presented with by those in power."

There's one more interview listed on the Wikipedia page, but I haven't listened to it yet--it's about an hour long.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/jul/12/saturdayreviewsfeatres.guardianrevie...

All probably contain spoilers.

It's working for me to cerebralize the book as I read: what is the point of this, what is the author trying to do.

Thanks for all that, Janet. I'll certainly do some reading when I finish. I think your practice of trying to "cerebralize" as you read is good - I just can't do it, or I haven't been able to do it yet. "Profeminist" eh? Well, he certainly makes the anti-feminist pov extremely unappealing!

I finished the book and posted a review. Tried to avoid spoilers. :-)

It's working for me to cerebralize the book as I read: what is the point of this, what is the author trying to do.
A necessary approach to this one, I think.

I finished too, and I have no way of talking about it. I was not while reading and am not now able to cerebralize the book. In the 2nd article that Janet supplied the link to, I found this which makes some sense to me: "Frank is supposed to stand for all of us, in some ways; deceived, misled, harking back to something that never existed, vengeful for no good reason and trying too hard to live up to some oversold ideal that is of no real relevance, anyway. " I can see all that.
I question that Frank is a reliable narrator. The three murders, for instance, have such a tenuous tie to reality that I can't quite believe them; likewise, the suicides.
I looked for the pro-feminism and all I could find was this comment as Frank is thinking about sheep. O.K. I can't find it. He says that he used to hate sheep for their stupidity and then realized that men had bred this into them at the same time that they bred them for tender meat and wool. He supposes that men have done the same for women, and that has some resonance with me.
Gee.

ETA: I don't think that "sociopath" as I understand it quite describes Frank. He is not charming and he doesn't manipulate people for his own use. At some level he cares about Eric and Jamie. He doesn't have wild sexual fantasies (at least not that I can recognize) and he is willing to work carefully and meticulously and to study what he doesn't know (French, for instance). On the other hand, he is murderous, so I don't know ----

I never thought Frank was an unreliable narrator and since Banks didn't consider him as such either that's good enough for me. Pro-feminist?? I don't see any evidence of that. Can anyone point to a passage that demonstrates this quality in Frank?

Fascinating discussion. I still don't have a copy, so can't yet comment on this book, but I recognise some of the themes from Banks' other works I have read, many of which explore religion, politics, death, violence etc with much black humour. The ones I have most enjoyed do usually have a more sympathetic narrator (I'm thinking especially of The Crow Road which was my first) - I don't know how I would have responded to this as my first exposure to Banks.

#50> Peggy, I was using "sociopath" in the clinical sense. In DSM, it's not actually a diagnosis any longer but is subsumed under Antisocial Personality Disorder. The defining characteristic is "a pervasive pattern of disregard for, and violation of, the rights of others that begins in childhood or early adolescence and continues into adulthood." They tend to have an "impoverished moral sense" (and here you could quibble because Frank may have a more distorted than impoverished moral sense -- he has very strict moral notions about some things).

Being charming is not a criterion for this diagnosis, although some sociopaths are, indeed, charming. Only in Hollywood is the charming part conceived as a defining characteristic, though. Hannibal Lecter wouldn't be interesting or successful if he wasn't also charming in a very warped sense. And sociopaths are able to care about particular individuals but their attachment to those individuals is usually pretty complicated; I think Frank qualifies in this regard, as well.

O.K. Thanks, Ellen. I was thinking about LBJ who was a great and charming user of people without conscience. He qualifies by your definition too. I get into trouble when I start trying to analyze. LBJ was able to compartmentalize successfully, and I don't see that Frank ever did that.................

Yes, you're right. Compartmentalization is actually (I believe) a sign of health. Well, it is and it isn't. Like so many things, some is better than all or nothing.

LBJ.... I don't feel like I know enough about him. Hmmm. I bet there is a book that would remedy that.

>51 brenzi:: I can't quite see Frank's behavior as pro-feminist, but I do think the book can be read that way: social construction of gender is a theme.

It's pretty clear by the end that Frank's hostility towards women, which he had believed was based on reason and observation, is actually conditioned by a pretty messed-up patriarchy.

I must say all of these fascinating comments are making it more and more likely I will return to the book. I had not set it aside in disgust or because I was offended - it just wasn't engaging me at the time. I may need to approach it cerebrally rather than emotionally...

Although I didn't like The Wasp Factory I am appreciating the discussion about the book.

(Ellen, OF COURSE! And not just one book but 4 so far. Robert A. Caro's huge biography of LBJ and his times begins with The Path to Power. I can't say enthusiastically enough what a wonderful writer Caro is or how engrossing and amazing these books are. I've read only the first three, waiting for the price of the fourth to come down even a dollar, and hoping that Caro lives long enough to finish the project.) (I was and was not a fan of LBJ pre-Caro, but that doesn't matter at all in the enjoyment and education I've received from these books.)

Back to *Wasp Factory* a minute. I'm still not sure how much of Frank's story I believe. I guess if I believe the ending (and I do), that I should have no trouble believing the rest. As I suspected, the real monster is the father, and we leave knowing no more about him than we did when we started. Or were there clues from the beginning that I missed?

> 60

Caution: POSSIBLE SPOILERS
Skip this if you have not finished the book.

Or were there clues* from the beginning that I missed?

There were clues. The father was the only one who prepared Frank's food. Frank's birth was registered nowhere. Then there was Frank's "accident" which made him different from other children.

* I never caught the clues, but then I usually miss clues in any mystery I read as well. :/

*possible spoilers continued*

>61 SqueakyChu:
I never caught the clues, either. And, of course, I knew something was up, but was fairly well taken by surprise.

(And thanks, Peggy, for the LBJ recommendations!)

>52 gennyt: And thanks, Genny for the other Iain Banks suggestions. I'll try The Crow Road somewhere down the line. Banks has several (4? 5?) on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list, so I'll try again. I can't say I 'enjoyed' this one, but it was fascinating and it's certainly not one that I'm likely to wonder if I've read it or not.

Thanks, Madeline.
*** More Spoiling***
I remember the clues about the girl business, which I didn't really get before although something was clearly up more clearly as time went on.
What I was really asking about is whether anybody got a clue about the father's motivation. Was there anything at all?

#51 Hi, brenzi
Pro-feminist?? I don't see any evidence of that. Can anyone point to a passage that demonstrates this quality in Frank?

SPOILER ALERT

brenzi, I don't necessarily see any pro-feminist qualities in Frank but the book has strong profeminist elements. I can point to a passage but to a major theme of the book, i.e. the suppression of feminism by the father. If that is not a strong pro-feminist statement I don't know what is. I'm trying to avoid being too specific here for fear of ruining part of the story for people.

I agree that Frank was a reliable narrator, i.e. he stated facts as he experienced them and as they were presented to him. The people telling him things may have been telling lies.

Of course, as Iain said in his last TV interview, The Wasp Factory is a black comedy. Not everybody's cup of tea, but I loved it.

And Still More Spoiling

So what do you make of the fact that the father dressed the older brother in girl's clothes for awhile?

I don't like to talk about it.

Wow!
That's a real conversation stopper, pg. I take it back.

#68 :-)

(Potential spoiler warning! I'll attempt to be vague and yet precise.)

In relation to 66, I hadn't really thought about it as the father was obviously maladjusted, especially with regards to his thoughts and feelings about females. Dressing one son in girls clothing could just have been another symptom of that. I felt that what he did to Frank indicated that he could not cope with the reality of the situation.

(Spoilers, etc.)

>66 LizzieD:: Yeah, that's puzzling. Frank says at the end, "My father dressing Eric up as a girl was just, as it turned out, a rehearsal for me," though it's a little difficult to see why-- if you're going to practice dressing your child as a girl, why not dress the girl?

Here is an analysis that thinks Frank's memory of Eric wearing a dress is in fact a suppressed memory of himself. This makes more sense, but I don't see textual evidence for that interpretation.

This book, IMO, will be remembered for a very long time. I wrote my review. It's a mingy 4.95 stars of five. It should be six. I have a hard time with Eric's actions, or it would be.

Richard, have you read any other Banks? I can't see any in your library. I imagine you would like his other books too.

Genny, I only began cataloging after more than half my books disappeared. Twice in my life movers have just *lost* thousands of books, and I've still had to pay for the privilege of having them lose them.

I've read Canal Dreams and one other besides The Wasp Factory. I've been aimed at the Culture novels more than once, but so far haven't made it into one.

Richard, that's a stunning review that helps me make more sense of the book. Thank you.
I'm sorry about the lost books; twice is grossly unfair. DO try the Culture books, but pick a good one. If I may, Excession and Use of Weapons are my favorites.

Richard, I thought your review was brilliant (it probably helps that I agree with you). Thanks for posting the link.

>74 LizzieD: Oh good, and thanks for letting me know!

*scribblescribblescribble* Thanks for the recs, I've wishlisted them!

>75 EBT1002: I'm so glad you liked the review, Ellen! I'll pretend it was my review that made you think that so as to protect my fragile male ego.

#73 I guessed that the content of 'Your LIbrary' on here was not necessarily representative of all that you own/used to own, let alone all that you have read. But how awful to have had movers lose your books not once but twice.

I started my Banks with The Crow Road and have read most of his non-culture ones since then apart from the two most recent. I've been meaning to get back to his earlier ones, so far I've got as far back as Canal Dreams and I have a copy of Walking on Glass (a painful sounding title) which I started last month but got distracted from. I must admit that although I do enjoy his books, I have always been rather put off by the brief descriptions I've read of The Wasp Factory and have not been particularly in a hurry to go back and read this one, but the interestingly polarised and animated discussion on this thread has made me want to get to it and see for myself.

I've also just made a start on the Culture novels this year, beginning with Consider Phlebas, which I enjoyed quite a bit and as I gather it is by far not the best of them, I'm looking forward to things getting even better. I've learned that one of the things to look out for in those is the wonderfully diverse and funny names given to the spacecraft (in Consider Phlebas there are the relatively restrained Nervous Energy, Prosthetic Conscience, The Ends Of Invention and Irregular Apocalyse; while I gather from a website listing them all that in Player of Games you will find among others: Screw Loose, Flexible Demeanour, Just Read The Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You).

Well, Your Vicarness, The Wasp Factory is *ex*treme*ly* unsparing of human nature. It is also very brilliantly constructed. It is without doubt going to haunt you, should you read it. My opinion is that you are intellectually up to the task of looking at the book's emotional wallop without allowing it to mire you in despair.

The other Banks I read, it came to me last night, was The Business...it's very British, with lots of Authority being rebelled against in shadowy, secretive ways.

As a great fan of Banks, I’ve been following this discussion with great interest and there is one theme(?) that I haven’t seen addressed…. namely, morality(?). (And I’m not sure if those are the terms I mean….)

The Wasp Factory put me thru many changes emotionally… confusion, revulsion, disgust, disbelief. But…. in the end, I found myself feeling a great deal of sympathy for Frank. He was a creature manufactured by his father’s narcissistic manipulations and was forced to find some rationale for functioning. So, I started to feel empathy for his need for an identity and the tools he invented to find (or justify) one.

The Factory itself seems indicative of a desire to effect order and reason in Frank’s fractured, chaotic existence. It is a mechanism that has “rules” and functions as a “higher power,” absolving Frank of personal responsibility for any disasters. His obsessive care of the poles and the rituals performed in the Bunker also seemed to serve as sacraments in a way. Even though these things don't Solve Everything, they do seem to act as a "flotation device" of some sort that he desperately needs. (Some of this is reminiscent of Golding’s The Lord of the Flies… another situation where children invent a god to avoid chaos in a bad situation.)

There has been a lot of discussion about whether gender is innate or learned. So, for the lack of a better term, is goodness innate? Frank's efforts seem to say that it is, but.... any thoughts, anyone?

(Hi, Peggy!)

Goodness, innate?! Wouldn't the Universe be a better place if that were true.

Frank's emotional "flotation devices" (love that image, so apt and so precise) are, in my view, expressions of the essential powerlessness Frank feels over life, its events, its very outlines outside Frank's personal control.

The Wasp Factory is a deeply disturbing artifact. Its bleakness is triply emphasized by Frank's invention of such a cruel device, Frank's usage of it as a form of fortune-telling, and Frank's apparent inability to relate to the material or the emotional worlds Frank inhabits without destroying the future of others.

I think it's fair, what Frank does, given what's happened...but it's disturbing and it's bleak and it's chilling.

YAY for Nulla joining the conversation!
I keep feeling empathy - I guess - for Frank's handling of his situation rather more than the huge horror I feel for his blind destructiveness. Whatever there is in him that evokes that response is innate, and I would maybe even call it good. What a sadness that it doesn't override the evil that he does. I think that's getting at what the church has always called Original Sin!

>79 Nulla: in the end, I found myself feeling a great deal of sympathy for Frank.

Yep, me too, even as much as I abhored most of his behaviors.

I completely agree about Frank's reaction to powerlessness, his expressions of frustration and anger. He has grown up in a vacuum.... isolated legally, socially and sexually, due to his father's "experiment." That he's managed to construct a viable (to him) moral environment at all is, I think, commendable and maybe even miraculous. As an optimist, I see this as "good"....

Banks seems to have a macabre sense of humor mixed with a great deal of empathy. I went back and listened to the BBC interview about The Wasp Factory and found him to be warm and funny, and not quite the radical one might expect. The gratingly brutal, raw quality of The Wasp Factory, which he calls a black comedy, might be because of first-novelitis. His humor becomes more refined and subtle in subsequent works, some of it autobiographical. The Quarry, his last novel, seems to deal with his battle with cancer and his approaching death. A couple of months before his death he asked his long time partner to do him "the honor of becoming my widow." So, it all seems a genuine part of his personality....

Regarding Frank's father's motives.

My book is back at the library, but did the father ever have a name? if not, that's interesting, too.

I also don't think anyone has pointed out that the extended family could also have filled a hospital. I'm thinking of the two uncles with their botched suicide attempts and Blyth losing his leg playing chicken on the motorway. Again, I don't have my book to double check, but I remember wondering about the reaction of Blyth's parents to that incident.

Yes, about Banks sense of humor. In one of the interviews he mentioned that he is known for having the characters in his books die in highly unusual ways.

and my review:

This book is everything you've heard about it. It's horrifying and fascinating and polarizing; it breaks you apart and puts your world view together slightly differently than it was before.

Frank is a 16 year old boy who lives on an small island in Scotland. He is one of the most psychologically tortured protagonists I have met. In turn, he tortures a variety of small animals and has killed two cousins and a younger brother. But no matter. He won't murder again; he's over that now. It was just a stage.

He protects his island with sacrifice poles festooned with the skulls of small animals he has killed. He predicts the future with wasps who chose their own death by torture. He communicates telepathically using the skull of a dog who ripped off his genitals when he was a toddler.

Frank has reason to fear; his older brother, whom he loves and admires, has escaped from the mental institution where he was incarcerated after a series of burning dogs alive. Frank's father, who seems at least a bit eccentric, also has the most terrible secret of them all.

In the closing scene, I felt quite sad for Frank.

But I wouldn't invite him home for supper.

Brilliant, unforgettable, not for the squeamish (I usually count myself in that number and don't know if I would have finished without the encouragement of the group read).

>85 streamsong: Nice review, Janet!

>84 streamsong: I'm pretty sure, without getting up to check (hey, it's 0220 and I'm all comfy), that Frank's father is nameless. It does make an interesting point.

For me, the uncles were merely window-dressing. This is so much Frank's book that I even wonder if those events happened....

>85 streamsong: SPot-on!

I think the father's name is Angus.

I thought I remembered one reference to the father's name too. Thanks, Nulla.
Richard, that's what I've wondered about everything....that is, how many of the events really happened; how much of the wasp factory and the Bunker actually exist. I may end up thinking that Banks was being a bit unreliable himself when he claimed that Frank was not an unreliable narrator.