The Wasp Factory (1984) by Iain Banks centres on the narration of Frank Cauldhame, a teen living in an isolated house on a remote island in Scotland. Frank’s a psychopath with three murders chalked up, having dispatched some relatives at an early age in somewhat darkly comic circumstances. There’s another brother, Eric, recently escaped from a mental hospital and heading home, creating tension as with each call home he’s getting closer.
What’s especially gripping is the way Frank casually drops terms or references to incidents into the narrative and we’re on tenterhooks to understand them. Even when not much happens in the novel itself, there’s suspense aplenty as the back story is graduallly revealed and, as with many an unreliable narrator, we read between the lines because they cannot see the truth.
To talk about the book in broader thematic terms is difficult as Banks leads us to a major reveal that casts new lights on aspects of Frank’s narration and these are best discovered on one’s own. It’s safe to say Frank is a very interesting character with a clearly defined world. Whether it’s the secret names for places on the island (the Rabbit Grounds, the Bomb Circle) that need unpicking or rigid opinions on gender roles, with a clear disdain for women shining through, Frank’s narrative is captivating from start to finish, in spite of its affectlessness.
As a modern Scottish Gothic, Banks is clearly, and knowingly, plundering classic novels that reflect the supposed Caledonian Antisyzygy, but also tapping other works. Frank’s isolation is pure ‘Lord of the Flies’ and there’s more than a hint of a certain 1818 novel. But it’s perhaps also reflective of its time, and I wonder if The Wasp Factory is, in some way, a critique of Thatcher’s first term, a vision of an unregulated world in microcosm.
Frank’s world is definitely bleak: a dysfunctional family; going out and getting drunk, an undisclosed disabilty; and offing a wide range of animals in various ways. But all this and more adds to a fascinating and addictive psychological study that asks the classic questions of nature versus nurture, among many others, with a satisfying sting in the tale.