Why, yes, this was the very copy of the Wasp Factory I purchased with the same book token I used to buy that copy of One Hundred Years Of Solitude. Well spotted.

By all accounts this caused a bit of a storm when it first came out, as witnessed by the infamous Irish Times review, now used as a blurb of pride, though not on my edition. It can't be the murders or the paganism or the dysfunctional family or the gruesome bit or the cruelty to animals, because there was nothing there that you couldn't have found in horror fiction in one form or another over the years. I imagine what rankled was the language and the realism and the psychological acuity, not to mention the literary packaging. Nowadays, from that point of view, it seems relatively tame. Still packs a bit of a wallop, though.

Frank lives with his father on a small island in Scotland. He mounts animal skulls on poles, embeds wasps in candle wax, hunts rabbits with a flame thrower and keeps the skull of his enemy, Old Saul, in a bunker. The island is his domain and he rules it like a god. Now his brother, Eric, who sets dogs on fire, has escaped from his asylum and is on his way home.

Frank's a monster, a fledgling serial killer who capriciously decided on a different career track after his first three victims. His rituals and his ceremonies and his totemic objects make sense of the world and make sense of his own mind. His voice is sane, articulate, witty and intelligent. He uses it to describe his odd activities, makes them seem strange, unhealthy, perhaps, but essentially harmless. Then he seamlessly uses that same voice to describe catapulting small animals into river mud, the murder of his brother and two cousins or his attitude to women. One clings to the voice as a sign of potential redemption, but redemption is something you do, not something you are, and Frank is utterly aware of what he is and of what he has done. Or so he thinks.

A familiar pattern of secrets, ideas, family circles, social lives and horrible accidents and bizarre occurrences marks this as the proto-Banks novel, but for a debut it springs fully formed with voice, attitude and gleeful cunning intact and ready to rip it up through the twin worlds of literary and science fiction.