Unoriginality in The Wasp Factory (Spoilers)

[Patrick Thistle]

A few people have written things on here about The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks, especially the twist at the end that Frank is actually Frances.

The thing is for me that I'd seen that twist before used in another book. It took me a while to remember but then I recalled my junior school class being read a book called 'The Turbulent Term of Tyke Tyler' by Gene Kemp. Published in 1977, it was a Carnegie Medal winning novel. The central plot focuses on Tyke navigating the final term of school. Tyke is boisterous and gets into lots of scrapes but it isn't revealed until very near the end of the book that Tyke is a girl (real name Theodora). I remember some of my classmates letting out gasps at that revelation.

If that was the only similarity then I'd just shrug it off. But there's also a scene where Tyke is on a school trip to a beach and finds a washed up mine and starts throwing stones at it until the teachers arrive and yell at her to stop. In The Wasp Factory, Frank kills off his little brother by telling him to hit a washed up mine with a stick, which then explodes.

I don't remember anyone setting fire to dogs or torturing wasps in a convoluted series of traps in Gene Kemp's book. But those two similarities bug me a bit.

[jwdd27]

Ha! I remember the Tyke Tyler book well and remember being shocked by the twist. I think I re-read it looking for clues. At the time I thought it was the greatest book ever.

The Wasp Factory I never really 'got', possibly because so many people had recommended it to me, and I used to enjoy telling people that the thing they like is shit.

[Lang Spoon]

Iain Banks wasn't a very good writer I fear. The Business is one of the worst things purporting to be literary fiction I've ever read. Not a sci fi fan, but his Culture stuff was way more enjoyable.

[pebblethefish]

I'd forgotten all about Tyke Tyler. On one of my teaching practices it was the class book, and all the kids (and one student teacher) loved it. I can feel an Amazon search coming on...

I'm a massive Iain Banks fan, but even I wouldn't consider it "literary" fiction.

[Bored Of Education]

I'm a big Iain Banks fan but thought that The Wasp Factory was broadly shit and the twist was terribly and amateurishly done. However, fortunately, I had read books of his before and able to ignore this but was amazed when I heard people lauding it. 'Espedair Street' is the rarest of things - a great novel about music - and 'The Crow Road' and 'Complicity' are great books. Some of the rest are patchy but he was an author, like John Iriving or Joseph O'connor, tries different things which are sometimes successful , sometimes less so but I respect them for not sticking to the tried and trusted best-selling formula. Actually, to be fair, The Wasp Factory is an early sign of his ambition but just not very well executed. I am never quite sure what 'literary fiction' is or, indeed, whether I have ever read it but I don't think that Banks, like Irving or O'connor, is it nor that he was particularly thought of as such.