#the wasp factory book

[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

[thebooksareeverywhere]

life recently🥰

[oopdeathnote]

I have read so many Tumblr posts about B and still none of them could have prepared me for just how much of a little freak he is. Misora is currently wondering whether he has bones in his neck.

[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!!!

[malcolmreeds]

this is so sid coded

[erosology]

*buying erotica at the bookstore* this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes this is for research purposes—

[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.

[iishmael]

I KNEW IT I KNEW IT I KNEW IT

[vile-bestia]

Holy triad of grotesque horror

In order according to how disturbing they were for me; considering how they might be interpreted at face value; with theme: child/childhood, puer aeternus, if you will, innocence (the innocence - that is to say, the disinhibition - in killing or hurting, with or without specific criteria), perversion and impulse, how and what the books might or might not criticize, what systems are questioned and so on.

Trigger warnings, from all the books sparingly (mentions, descriptions and representations of [...], etc):

Taboo.

Of the sexual kind. Sexual abuse. Incest (mentioned only and only in theory, as far as I remember); perversions in childhood, acts perpetrated by children, sexual phases and behaviours of the child, negation or acceptance and consequent indulgence in hidden desires.

Cults or sects, general abuse, drug use, blood, torture (on humans, on animals), gore, body horror, violent, but surely creative, death; general cruelty (children involved), bombs, explosions, rather accurate descriptions of death by such events, etc.

Misogyny, racism, transphobia; bad representation of mental illnesses; and, of course, any kind of discrimination and trauma that might go on in a family system.

Pros of reading the books if you manage not to get triggered:

Religious citations done right

Cool

...

Spoilers.

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God's Child (Kami no Kodomo) - published by Ohta Shuppan - Story and art by Nishioka Kyōdai (Satoshi and Chiaki Nishioka siblings).

Short manga, probably the most triggering of the list, as it also contains visual elements. It might be taken as disturbing for the sake of it, and maybe it is. No morals and apparently even fewer regrets.

The narration is great, but the story in an of itself doesn't hold any sort of very special value.

However, and this is important, I feel like the graphic style is what justifies the story and the very creation of the wonderful sacrilege. I won't waste any words and instead opt to attach some safe panels. In any case, if God's Child is not for you, I still recommend you to research other works by the same authors.

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The perfume - Patrick Süskind.

"The late 20th-century novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders) by Patrick Süskind (1949– ) is probably the best-known German literary text to appear in the last half of the century. It is a complex multilayered postmodern tale exhibiting features of many genres— at least partially alluded to in the seeming discrepancy between title and subtitle. Primarily, it is a detective fantasy set in 18th-century France, but it has also been interpreted as a critique of enlightenment attitudes, a (mock) historical novel, a bildungsroman, specifically a Künstlerroman, and it certainly is a pastiche with sheer infinite intertexts and allusions to cultural, artistic, scientific, and literary facts and events."

"But the privileging of one mode of perception, a feature observable in much of Süskind’s work, forms only one of several structures of fascination that grab the reader almost physically: disgust, human depravity, criminality, perverted erotics, but also the novel issue of olfactory aesthetics, the impressive and easily communicated knowledge of perfumery, and the quick sociohistorical sketches of the city of Paris."

Tremendously intriguing with two hints of irony hidden behind obsession and a destiny that seems to be fully supporting the protagonist- a maladapted genius, a manipulative loner and an ambulant death omen. I hope you're in for a fun time during your execution - if you wish to see a priest get so horny as to shake his green miter off his head without realizing; if you're in to witness dreams of crimson palaces that overwhelm all senses just as much as all reasoning.

Part of what makes this book my favorite is how detached the protagonist is. Grenouille's impulse towards his victims is not sexual nor sensual; instead, through his (surely distorted) perspective (surely, still that of an unjustifiable murderer) all faults and hypocrisies of the society that surrounds him come alarmingly alive.

(Section 2: I fucking hate the movie)

This however is not how the story is portrayed in the movie, that I was able to watch with only a little bit of disgust on my face EXCLUSIVELY because I was so stoned that all my muscles were locked in place. Imagine how bad the movie had to be in order to get them to move. More points against the movie, that you SHOULDN'T watch before reading the book (...I should have said: movie that you shouldn't watch at all, if you wish to keep sane; but you do you, since you're reading this post and it will only get worse from here):

The protagonist, whose actions are all about manipulation, lacks all manipulative charge and is made into a half-stereotype of an autistic kid with a special talent. Not say this kid couldn't be autistic, I'm talking about the representation/narrative the movie gives it (also, writing this as an autistic).

Not only this, but while he is supposed to be grotesque, utterly disgustingly ugly in his looks, the movie makes him out to have a sort of "primitive" look that is anyhow still quite attractive. It's not the actor's fault, that's not my point.

The movie lacks the seven years Grenouille spends in his cave, which, interestingly, are crucial to his development.

His murders are made into something somewhat erotic or with a sensual or romantic drive. While there is erotism in murder - beauty comes from terror, and such is true, because I know it is; and while there is perversion in the book, in the movie it feels like it was portrayed as a love story gone wrong, because "Grenouille is just a guy he doesn't know how to cope and how to behave" (see point n.1).

To summarize: the book does not romanticize any part of itself. Onward.

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The wasp factory - Iain Banks.

In the middle regarding the triggering level, but probably the most controversial book out of the three because of the representation of the characters' situations, and because of how hidden the meaning behind it might be. Note: the trans experience is NOT the point of the book, because:

It is forced;

It is a tool used to explain the critique the book brings forth.

I encourage you to read the essay below: Devolving gender in Iain Bank's "The wasp factory".

And also this one:

Other stuff :P I find the narration a bit dense, not too fluent, in some points, but past the beginning it got better for me. Know this: the wasp factory made me feel depraved as I read it, whether I was horrified or laughing at the deaths.

Bye

[benjaminbadger]

I drew Steven Grout from Walking on Glass by Iain Banks. My favourite character from my least favourite book

[closeted-goth]

attempting to read i am behind you by john ajvide lindqvist and man.. it would be wrong of me to say "let the right one in was a fluke" considering it's the only book by him i've finished. but let the right one in was a fluke.

[thebooksareeverywhere]

Review: The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

Storygraph | Bookshop.org Frank – no ordinary sixteen-year-old – lives with his father outside a remote Scottish village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank’s mother abandoned them years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of violence to vent…

[joshcockroft2]

The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 

6.2.2023

I first read this at least 13 years ago (maybe longer). It left a big impression and was one of those books that gave the kind of reading high that you chase. It held up to my memory, and even still managed to surprise.