Inside The Wasp Factory

[Nearly Sane]

I remember so much of reading it the first time. It is sui generis still. I even remember buying it, the last book I bought at a proper book shop in home town.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2tfdxXf8zJvwWCFNtYFXMKX/bizarre-dark-and-grotesque-but-also-beautiful-and-hopeful

[splashscuba]

I remember so much of reading it the first time. It is sui generis still. I even remember buying it, the last book I bought at a proper book shop in home town.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2tfdxXf8zJvwWCFNtYFXMKX/bizarre-dark-and-grotesque-but-also-beautiful-and-hopeful

I reached the Ian Banks novels via his Ian M Banks books, as I was and am still a massive SciFi fan. He's was one of the few authors of none science fiction that I read. Sadly missed.

[Christine]

The Wasp Factory was my first Iain Banks. I read loads after that, all so different, you never knew what to expect. There was a brilliant one about a girl going to London on a mission from a remote cult-like community I liked particularly, and Walking on Glass, which was very weird (or that's what I thought 30 years ago, anyway). I never read his sci-fi.

[Nearly Sane]

The Wasp Factory was my first Iain Banks. I read loads after that, all so different, you never knew what to expect. There was a brilliant one about a girl going to London on a mission from a remote cult-like community I liked particularly, and Walking on Glass, which was very weird (or that's what I thought 30 years ago, anyway). I never read his sci-fi.

I think the cult one is Whit?


I particularly like Espedair Street but obviously The Crow Road is brilliant. You're right about not knowing what to expect, though I have to say I hated Dead Air.


The science fiction  stuff I found admirable rather than enjoyable.

[Sebastian Toe]

Wasp Factory, one of my wife's all time favourites.
I read it after her but I wasn't as smitten.
The Crow Road and Complicity however are really good.

Conversely, A Song of Stone is the most turgid piece of literature that I have had to force myself to finish!