[TW: Transphobia, sexism, extreme violance, animal abuse, abelism] The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks: My favorite deeply flawed book(all spoilers)

I adore this book. I really do. I find it engaging and fascinating in a really unique and special way. Anyone reading this who hasn't read the book, if you finish this post thinking you might like it too, I do recommend you pick it up. I want more people to read it because I want to talk about it more with people— it's interesting themes and the topics it explores. But I can't without a million caveats— especially when it comes to the ending. This book is kind of a mess, and I feel needs to be read within a certain context. And I know certain elements are going to grind people's gears. It's a beautiful mess of a novel.

Iain Banks describes being inspired to write this novel after traveling through the buttfuck nowheres of Scottland. He describes also wanting to write the most psychopathic child he could imagine. In that pursuit, he absolutely failed. The protagonist, 16-year old Frank Cauldhame, is categorically not a psychopath. Certainly not by today's diagnostic standards, and I don't even think he would be by the standards of when this book was published in 1982 either. What he did do though, was create a incredibly fascinating, raw character study of a deeply isolated, abused child.

By far the two big highlights of this novel is the prose, and Frank himself.

There's a lot of very disturbing graphic descriptions of cruelty towards animals in particular, as well as violance towards and mutilation of children. What elevates them beyond shock value is the evocative way Banks explores the tension, visceral experience, and emotions of the brutality itself. Anyone can write a graphic scene— this book is full of masterclass level execution in getting the reader to really engage with the palpable horror of it. It's surprisingly uncommon in my opinion to get an author capable of writing ultra violance with appropriate levels of gravity. Respecting the value in making it a truly visceral experience.

Then there's Frank. Beyond the content of the book itself, I feel like where this novel might lose some people is in how meandering and aimless it is. It really doesn't have much in terms of plot. The narrative is just more getting to occupy the headspace of a deeply disturbed teenager. As someone not as bothered by aimless plots so long as there's engaging characters to enjoy, as a matter of personal taste, I don't mind. I didn't really notice until a subsequent read through. And Frank's for sure a fascinating little guy. Frank's birth was never disclosed to the appropriate authorities, so there's no legal record of his existence. He's been kept isolated with very limited social interaction on a remote Scottish island with his disabled, abusive father. His older brother (we'll get to him) once also lived with them, but has been in a mental institution for some time at the start of the novel. He has no formal education, and describes ways in which his father has actively toyed with him by giving him false information. Frank's mother left when he was very young, suggested to be sometime soon after Frank was brutally mutilated in a dog attack that he believes principally destroyed his genitals. It's implied the two events are related.

It's clear Frank has grown up in an extremely unstable environment with little in terms of comfort or explanation as to why his life is the way it is. The highest quality companionship Frank had known in his early years was with his brother— who, as stated above, has been kept away from him for some time. He's developed a practice of ritualistically killing and maining animals in a bid to conjure a kind of nebulous psudeo-supernatural control over the world. The titular Wasp Factory is in reference to a device he's built were he traps wasps and forces them to try and escape through chambers which kill them in different ways as a means to try and decode the future itself. He's very much an unreliable narrator, and a lot of the events of the novel Frank describes to the reader that happened in the past are coded with a lot of magical thinking. I've seen some discussion on this book where it seems like a lot of people take Frank at his word, when I feel it's telegraphed to the reader none of this happened exactly like Frank is describing.

In the book, he describes committing three murders as a child. The first is likely the most accurate. There were other people involved and around, and Frank gives the most plausible explanation to. And still, it sounds like it was likely, on the whole, partially an accident. The third and final "murder" is so outlandish it's physically impossible. Frank was the only one present, and his motives as to why he did it are the most nebulous and nonsensical (until you get to the end of the novel— his only female "victim.") Especially by the time Frank tries to take personal responsibility for his brother's mental collapse despite explaining to the reader why he couldn't possibly have anything to do with it outside of, as he suggests, somehow psychically willing it to happen. It's clear Frank, having experienced all of these deeply traumatic events, has massaged the memories in his mind to give himself more control over his life than he really has. I think this element of the novel is one that really trips people up, since we're introduced to Frank murdering animals in such sadistic ways. But all of this really seems to be part of his coping, and him fashioning his self image in a way for him to survive his circumstances.

Frank is enacting a contemptible self-image because it gives him power. It lets him believe he has control and influence he doesn't have. Banks really digs deep into exploring a very raw depiction of an unflattering victimhood adopted by a child reacting to his environment. He expresses a lot of fascinating, introspective thoughts and contemplates a lot of really painful feelings that really draw you into his humanity. Frank is a whole vibe.

And this is where we have to get into . . . The twist. The extremely messy, insane twist, that's aged like moldy cheese overtime. It's kind of besides the point, but I can't not mention it because it's so unintentionally hilarious, but Frank eventually finds a very interesting item in his father's study. A severed penis in a jar. It is never explained how his father got it, where it came from, and I guess his father just left it there out in the open for ten years on the off chance his kid ever broke in to his study just to troll him I guess— but whatever. Frank thinks it's his penis, but it isn't. Frank's full name is Francis, she was assigned female at birth. Francis's father had been apparently secretly transitioning his daughter because he hates women. If you know anything about HRT, you'll know that the way the book describes how he did this not how that works. At all. And there's no way, with the information we are given about what Francis does and doesn't know, she couldn't have figured out she has a vagina. Despite having a lot of contempt for women herself, Francis decides extremely quickly she's cool with living as a woman by the end of the book (at least it's suggested, somewhat unclear.) The twist is ridiculous and does not work. Of course I have to acknowledge aswell, though Banks couldn't have possibly predicted this, the twist mirrors a lot of transphobic rehoric of the modern day of bad actors tricking children into transitioning. Because transition doesn't work like that.

Furthermore, a lot of elements involving the subplot around Francis's brother plays off a lot of really negative, harmful stereotypes about the mentally ill. There is also a character who is a little person— and though there's not anything explicitly offensive about their depiction as far as I can tell, it's clear this character is only a little person because there was and somewhat still is this weird trend of including little people in disturbing fiction for the asthetics, basically. It's weird.

With all that said, I have to confess, in the abstract— the ideas Banks was trying to get at with his twist, with the depiction of suffering and mental illness— I really connect with it. I really connect with it as a trans person, with mental health issues. The themes of surrendering to suffering, and not becoming monstrous in the wake of that which you can't control, punctuated by accepting yourself even in a mangled state. Exploring that through gender, and the duality of masculinity and femininity. Banks was really cooking with that. There's obviously the feminist angle to read that in, on the strength of femininity. There's also an appeal to positive masculinity you can get out of that. Even a pro-trans message since Francis lived her life as a man up until that point. Banks just went about expressing that idea in a very strange, clunky twist that rots even more with time, breaks suspension of disbelief, made me piss myself laughing about the inexplicable penis jar when I don't think that was the intended effect.

It is a loaded book with a lot of flaws, lot of baggage, and I fucking love it even though it's extremely flawed. Go give it a read if you're willing to meet it where it's at.