The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

The narrator of Banks' novel is an incredibly intriguing and disturbing specimen of a character.  There are a couple core elements to this book that really interest me.  The first I suppose being the intricacy of Frank's self-constructed world, with all its bizarre rituals and processes which we gradually get drawn deeper into.  Then there is the sheer disturbing creativity of it all as we witness Frank's crimes and understand the devilishly logical thought processes behind them.  But I suppose what really intrigued me was the occasionally beautiful yet sinisterly succinct and perhaps almost at times feminine passages of prose which are juxtaposed against the cruelty and disturbing subject matter of teenager Frank Cauldhame's life. It’s all just so oddly calibrated.

My father’s leg, locked solid, has given me my sanctuary up in the warm space of the big loft, right at the top of the house where the junk and the rubbish are, where the dust moves and the sunlight slants and the Factory sits – silent, living and still. –p.10

Ominous.

Clouds were coming in off the sea, closing the sky like a door and trapping the day’s heat over the island. Thunder rumbled on the other side of the hills, without light. I slept fitfully, lying sweating and tossing and turning on my bed, until a bloodshot dawn rose over the sands of the island. –p.157

The breaks in the cloud overhead were moving slowly inland as I walked back up the path towards the town. It was dark for half-seven, a summery gloom of soft light everywhere over the dry land. A few birds stirred themselves lethargically as I went past. Quite a few were perching on the wires of the telephone line snaking its way to the island on skinny poles. Sheep made their ugly, broken noises, little lambs bleated back. Birds sat on barbed-wire fences farther on, where the snagged tufts of dirty wool showed the sheep trails underneath…I sighed and kept on walking, through the slowly diminishing dunes and past the rough fields and straggle pastureland. –p.166

Perverse Pastoral?