A writer who is still close to my heart, Iain Banks with or without the M left us on 9 June 2013. A massive gap in British literature and a small one in my life.

The Wasp Factory which I picked out to reread this week, was voted one of the top 50 books that helped shape and inspire teenage lives the most as part of a World Book Day poll. It certainly impacted me; shocking, funny, scary, sad and above all cut through with Bank’s rogueish charm and easy-going writing style.

It’s Sunday and I have already finished the book, the most hated word in the English language unputdownable proved apt. I read it through early mornings and late nights entering an immersive virtual world that only the best books enable.

I wondered if I’d find it a disappointment. Would adult me scoff at what teen me had found so compelling? As it turns out it pushed many of the buttons the second time around, this is a book that has stood the test of time, it is of the highest quality. I love reading some of the reviews and newspaper comments of the time; ‘silly’, ‘mediocre’, ‘ghoulish’, ‘sick’, ‘sadistic’, ‘nasty’, ‘a bad dream of a book’. All they did was push the sales higher and bring it to my attention!

This Reading Challenge is proving really eye-opening, I’m trying to not make it turn into a chore and so far it hasn’t. It’s definitely got me back into regular reading post-COVID and I’m finding there are knock-on effects, an increasing ability to concentrate, more creative ideas, and more mental energy. Are these things all connected? Maybe.

“If you write a million words of rubbish, you start to realise what you leave out is just as important as what you leave in… The Wasp Factory was the first time I realised that.” ~ Iain Banks

I rated it 8.8 out of 10.

TTRPG Thoughts:

There are SO many aspects of this book, but I’ve picked out The Wasp Factory itself, the twelve sections of the disused clock, each one leading to a different death of the wasp and should then give the user the ability to predict the future. I love this idea, that someone is messing around with these primal almost pagan practices that start to influence the land and the people around them. I can imagine players spending ages deciphering the goings on on the island and trying to link it back to how The Wasp Factory operates. Or is it just a very intricate red herring?

For the last word, let’s leave it to the Irish Times, “A work of unparalleled depravity.” You can imagine what Iain Banks thought of that…