#the wasp factory

[the-walrus-squad]

I almost looked up something fucking UNHOLY

[bitterbanter]

Fanart of Wasp Factory ending

[haveyoureadthisbook-poll]

[dwarvendiaries]

Just finished The Wasp Factory. Holy fuck that was just like being slowly being bitten into by a creature. I predicted the twist a couple chapters ahead because reasons, but still have so many thoughts

[lady-inkyrius]

“Is Frank Cauldhame TMA” – the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate,

[thebooksareeverywhere]

life recently🥰

[strawberryblooded]

Just read The Wasp Factory..

What was that?

Reading it as a trans man was certainly an experience

[fandomhype]

The 40th anniversary edition of my favourite book of all time arrived ✨

[wastingmytimehere]

I’m about to finish the wasp factory and I’m wee bit nervous.

Cannae get more fucked, surely, but what the fuck is in that old man’s study…

[frangenda]

Horror Book Recommendations Needed

Hey guys! I absolutely love horror in any form (ARG, Movie, Game, Book, etc.) and lately have gotten into Splatterpunk/Extreme/Disturbing horror books.

The only thing is that multiple books I have been recommended are from the perspective of the killer/person doing the disturbing stuff and from the ones that I've read so far those just... don't work?

Like not in a 'haha I'm so desensitized' way because there are books with objectively less fucked up shit happening that I am disturbed by and enjoy reading. It's just that no matter what the protagonist is doing if they are just clinically describing it to the point where it feels like just another Tuesday, that actively takes me out of the book and out of feeling disturbed. If I'm reading disturbing fiction I'm reading it for the purpose of feeling DISTURBED and if I'm not disturbed while actually reading it then it doesn't feel like its doing it's job as a book.

I'd love to go more in depth about my thoughts on it but for the moment I want to see if there are any recommendations for me to get more data about these kinds of books.

So if you do know of any books that specifically have the protagonist as the person doing the disturbing stuff please let me know I want to see if there are good ones.

Two last things about any recs tho:

Nothing that jumps around perspectives to like, show other peoples direct responses I need it to be one persons pov

Nothing where its like 'oh the protagonist is doing this messed up thing but its totally normal in this society' so no like Tender is the Flesh type of deal

Thank you for any help!!!

[callbackp1ng]

ive done it again

[insanity-laughs-under-pressure]

Massive spoilers for The Wasp Factory!

I have finished reading said Wasp Factory and I actually had to have a little discussion with an invisible audience when I finished it.

It's not often I get grossed out by something in a book, but Eric's insanity origin story was actually so incredibly wild. It didn't help that I surprised myself with how much I could picture the maggots.

AND OF COURSE the absolute plot twist of plot twists. The twist that was so twisty I never would have thought of it in a million years.

Frank is actually a girl!

For a hot minute I did think it was the father, and I was extremely confused about the relevance of it. THEN it turns out it's Frank which was definitely not on my bingo card.

It was like a bildungsroman of mysognist turns to womanhood.

Don't get me wrong, it was written extremely well, but the plot twist was literally pulled out of thin air. The only hint was that (s)he always sat down when going to the toilet but that in the grand scheme of things was completely irrelevant.

Plus Eric never got caught (that we read) he set some sheep on fire then had a little snooze next to Frank, so what actually happened after that is anyone's guess. I kind of thought that in their showdown Frank would have revealed that they killed some people but that didn't happen, which was probably for the best.

To conclude, 10/10 book. Even if the plot twist seemed like someone threw a dart at a board of crazy narrative twists.

[tboygonzo]

Frank is Like That because he’s a middle child

[bonejunky6669]

The Wasp Factory is starting to kind of piss me off. i seriously love the story and brand of horror it presents, but the racist and sexist remarks the main character occasionally makes just puts a sour taste in my mouth. i understand Frank is supposed to be a psychopath and a fundamentally horrible human being, but it honestly just gets irritating. he can murder his little cousins and spend all day burning rabbits to death without throwing in how much he thinks women are stupid and weak. it feels entirely unneeded. also, the fact that there is not a single female character present in the book so far just furthers my belief that Frank being sexist is less of an intentional, mean-spirited character trait and more of just the authors bias. im going to finish the book because the plot greatly intrigues and i need to see how it ends( and I've already bought the book so i don't want to waste it) but its unfortunately getting really annoying and a little hard to look past those things.

i recommended The Wasp Factory if you truly want to challenge yourself when it comes to reading books that are hard to read- as in the content can become so gross and unbearable. i do enjoy making myself uncomfortable when it comes to reading, so that's the only upside to this i guess.

[thequietabsolute]

‘She realised that she belonged among the weak, in the camp of the weak, in the country of the weak, and that she had to be faithful to them precisely because they were weak and gasped for breath in the middle of sentences.’

-- Milan Kundera, from The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1984)

[lady-inkyrius]

Finally finished rereading The Wasp Factory, I've been meaning to for ages but kept on procrastinating. The last time I read it was when I was like 14 or something and hadn't even considered that I might be any form of trans so I really wanted to see how that changed my perspective.

I really wish there were more analyses of this book from a trans perspective. I know that's not really what the book's about, more about sexism than trans identity, but it would be very interesting.

I don't even know whether saying Frank is trans makes sense, but I still feel like he¹ can definitely embody experiences of both trans women and trans men, even if it is in a rather naïve fashion.

I'd forgotten how short the last part of the book actually is, there's basically just 5 pages after the reveal. It does feel a bit tell-not-showish but I think it gets the message across well and, at least to me, is a satisfying ending.

I've seen some people say it feels like the trans themes are put in as an excuse for Frank's sexism, but I don't really get that. To me it just feels like a paradigm shift, so that he can reflect on the sexism from an separate perspective. Like I don't view it as transphobic, just perhaps less well fleshed out than it could've been on the topic, it is from 1984 and I don't really know what the trans community was like in Scotland at the time.

¹ I swear I remember reading somewhere about how Banks used he/him when thinking about Frank's story during the plot of the book and then she/her when thinking about Frank in events after then end of the plot, but I can't find it now. It doesn't matter really.