The Wasp Factory
Iain Banks. I have the bad habit of prejudging alive authors for just that; being alive. I consider that only time is the best critic for literature and, thus, I tend to dismiss most of the contemporary stuff hanging around (apart from Terry Pratchett, whom I read without the critical eye of the grumpy literarian and enjoy just for the sake of it - when one is shallow, one is ubershallow, but not as ubershallow so as to read Danielle Steel - just yet).
But, due to the intolerable minutes of commuting I have to do every day (it coulde be worse, but one has to complain about something), I have been happily forced to read everything that is stored around my house, including Mannginger's books. And alas, what a good find The Wasp Factory was, hiding in his side of the bookshelf between Dan Brown and... Dan Brown.
I did certainly expect something dark - judging it by the cover comments describing it as a "gothic story" and by the illustration presenting it - do not judge a book by its cover? naaaah... But this was more than dark; it was gripping, entertaining, and well written. Yes, and dark, very dark in its own childish way. The style was concise and humble, working like a good faceful of make whose success is rated by the seeming lack of painty artifice and the negligee look of natural beauty. No arty expletives, no artistic wannabe-isms, and a frank and direct single and very personal voice guiding you through the reading, compelling it to follow it despite the rather boring surroundings and pretty normal life it leads.
I would describe it as a mixture of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime" (another good book I would thoroughly recommend) and "Lord of the Flies". The book narrates the thoughts of a teenager living in pretty strange circumstances in Scotland, surrounded by normality and behaving normally in his own way. The set and characters: himself and his father, a runaway mad brother, two murders, a sinister ceremonial skull and a semi-autistic outlook on life only disrupted by the staging of works destruction and doom. Only the end seems a bit lacking, but hey, this is perhaps because it IS the end and one is left with the uneasy feeling of ... what happens next?
Cannot say more as I would be spilling the beans...
But, due to the intolerable minutes of commuting I have to do every day (it coulde be worse, but one has to complain about something), I have been happily forced to read everything that is stored around my house, including Mannginger's books. And alas, what a good find The Wasp Factory was, hiding in his side of the bookshelf between Dan Brown and... Dan Brown.
I did certainly expect something dark - judging it by the cover comments describing it as a "gothic story" and by the illustration presenting it - do not judge a book by its cover? naaaah... But this was more than dark; it was gripping, entertaining, and well written. Yes, and dark, very dark in its own childish way. The style was concise and humble, working like a good faceful of make whose success is rated by the seeming lack of painty artifice and the negligee look of natural beauty. No arty expletives, no artistic wannabe-isms, and a frank and direct single and very personal voice guiding you through the reading, compelling it to follow it despite the rather boring surroundings and pretty normal life it leads.
I would describe it as a mixture of "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime" (another good book I would thoroughly recommend) and "Lord of the Flies". The book narrates the thoughts of a teenager living in pretty strange circumstances in Scotland, surrounded by normality and behaving normally in his own way. The set and characters: himself and his father, a runaway mad brother, two murders, a sinister ceremonial skull and a semi-autistic outlook on life only disrupted by the staging of works destruction and doom. Only the end seems a bit lacking, but hey, this is perhaps because it IS the end and one is left with the uneasy feeling of ... what happens next?
Cannot say more as I would be spilling the beans...
