Buckle in. This post is going to contain major spoilers for Iain Banks’ The Wasp Factory. And it’s one of those books that has twists that range from fairly big to huge, and the BEST way to go into the book is without knowing much about it — definitely not knowing the spoilers.

Before I put the spoilers, I will say that I loved the book. I read it as part of my serial killer series, but I’m not a hundred percent sure it’s a serial killer book despite the serial murder. At the same time it has a lot of important aspects of the genre that have solidified some of the genre markers I’ve been exploring. Secondly, I will say it took me a long time to get through the book — about a month. For me, the writing was dense. Not difficult, but overly descriptive. (Which might be ironic because I’ve read other reviews that says Banks was minimally descriptive). But the description and repetition of scenes felt necessary to creating the suffocating feel of the factory. And in the end, those scenes “snicked” into place.

The reason I say the Wasp Factory might not be a serial killer book is that it almost feels like an anti-creation myth. Whereas creation stories generally show the first kill and how things progress, getting more intense, violent, and closer together… the Wasp Factory feels almost like the opposite. There are three murders in the book, which all take place while Frank is a young child (Between around 6-9), and at the beginning of the book, Frank clearly states that these were just a phase he was going through and he has no intention of carrying out more murders.

Being in the serial killer mindset and reading this book because it was suggested as a book about serial killers, I assumed this was the delusion of self-control most serial killers have, and I waited for things to progress to more violent throughout the book. But it really does seem like the most violent murders took place in the early years, and that urge sort of settled in Frank. At the end of the book, I don’t think Frank will be going out, committing more murders. It is less an origin story and almost more of a healing story, which is not something you see often in serial killer fiction. The serial killer seems to be the most irredeemable archetype in fiction. Even vampires and werewolves have been redeemed and found ways to be the hero and sublimate their urges. But serial killers — even when positioned as the “good guy” — neve sublimate their urges. This is because they are defined by their act of killing. To take that away, and you would only have a human.

All that being said, there are three murders that take place over the course of several years. Well, if you don’t buy into the “it’s all in Frank’s head” theory. Which… is a fairly solid theory. I won’t go into it in depth, but you can read this great blog about it. Basically, the idea starts with: Eric is a figment of Frank’s imagination and is, in ways, his alternative, more sensitive self that he creates after the Old Saul attacks him. Eric wore dresses until he was three, he was kind and feminine, he left the island often, and he made a life for himself that Frank can never hope to as he’s trapped on the island. From there, you get each murder being a ritual killing of an aspect of Frank rather than a literal killing of another child. Blythe is Frank killing his childhood aggression and surrendering to ritual as opposed to emotion. Paul is him killing the reincarnation of Old Saul — which is him killing the creation of himself — and Esmerelda is him killing his feminine self. If the book is read in this way, then there are no murders and it is not a serial killer book at all.

But this is a blog about serial killer books, so let’s take things literally and say that a young child killed off three other young children and look at how that plays into the genre.

War and the Serial Killer

When we talk about the age of serial killers in the United States, we can’t help but discuss the effects of war on masculinity. There have historically been increases in serial killers after each major war, with the most in the 1980s. It is hypothesized that killers grew up in the uncertainty of global upheaval, but that they also grew up around male role models suffering from PTSD, who may have been violent and controlling in the home, leading to the disintegration of the family and the corruption of the masculine identity. In reality, the destabilization of war can create the environment that allows serial killers to thrive, but in fiction, what becomes interesting is how the serial killer interacts with the symbols and aftermath of war — which is not something I’ve seen covered so blatantly as it is in The Wasp Factory.

* A note on this section: Iain Banks was a Scottish author and the book is set in Scotland. I have no knowledge of war in Scotland or how it impacted their society. Although I’ve learned and read about wars in the American or Bulgarian context, I’ve not read a lot of post-war literature so… take all this with an American-lensed grain of salt.

Banks has said in interviews that The Wasp Factory is an anti-war book, and that isn’t too hard to see. Frank spends his time on the island creating elaborate wars either with figurines or animals (such as during the rabbit attack). He has access to weaponry (but never the amount and strength he wants). There are constantly war planes flying over the island, sometimes crashing in the sea, other times leaving bombs behind, such as the bomb that Frank uses to kill Paul. Furthermore, the belly of the house is filled with explosives that Frank’s father uses to start fires throughout the year but could easily blow up the house and a good portion of the island.

Avoiding Harm Becomes Inflicting Harm

Throughout the book there are two themes associated with the bombs on the island: avoiding the bombs and then using the bombs as traps or weapons against others. Frank lives in a precarious dual-faceted world. On one hand, he’s completely protected from the outside world, unmarked by society’s rules and regulations and completely safe to be “himself”. On the other hand, he’s growing up on an island that is literally filled with explosives. Bombs on the beach. Explosives under his house. There’s a feeling that at any moment everything he knows may blow up. This juxtaposition can lead to plenty of literary critique, but what does it say in the serial killer genre?

When Frank uses the bombs, it is a way of him trying to gain control of a world in which he should have ultimate control but is actually living quite precariously. Each act of violence — the bombs used on the rabbits or on his younger brother — almost feels like a safety valve releasing pressure. In that way, the violence almost becomes sympathetic. This child is trying to make sense of chaos and gain control of a world that is highly unstable and threatening. And the only way he can do that is through sacrificing others. This doesn’t make his actions forgivable, but it creates a world where they’re understandable. Where nothing is sure and right and stable, how can a child be expected to be?

Perhaps the most metaphorical example of this is when Frank kills his brother Paul by using a bomb that washed up on the shore of their island. He had always planned to kill Paul because he thought of him as a reincarnation of the dog the mutilated his genitals. But the manner in which he did so was quite unlike his other murders. Paul, who he was close to and cared for, he killed in the most hands-off manner — having him hit the head of the washed up bomb and explode. It is not lost on the reader that he uses the same methods his father uses to control his world to get his younger brother to hit the bomb. His father constantly lied to him about basic facts in little “experiments” about what a child would accept as reality. Frank, years later frustrated by this, looks back at a moment when he used the same methodology on Paul — he created a lie in which a bomb was something beautiful (a bell) and not something harmful, knowing full well that the child will always believe the older person at least long enough to cause irreparable harm.

Taking Control From an Abusive Parent

By the end of the book, there’s no question that Frank’s father is an abusive parent, conducting experiments on his children for his own benefit or due to his own insecurities. But throughout the book, there are other clues to Angus’ abuse, beginning with the explosives that are kept beneath their home. Angus keeps enough explosives in the home to blow up the house and maybe the island, using them to light fires throughout the year. Frank must live with the uncertainty of these explosives beneath him, put and kept there by the one person in the world who is supposed to keep him safe. At the same time, he’s not allowed to touch the explosives, and his father is clearly fastidious about measurements and will know if any is missing.

Throughout the book, Frank laments that he cannot get his hands on these explosives and makes do with pipe bombs and other small-scale, homemade explosives. He sees that the world around him can be controlled by weaponry, and he is able to control his kingdom with his own weaponry, but only so much. The weaponry that could give him ultimate power is withheld by the previous generation, not only out of concern for his wellbeing, but because of their own anxieties about the world around them and their place in it.

This, along with the main plot point of Frank’s gender, shows the ways in which generational trauma can ripple and, when caught in a closed container, those ripples can turn to waves of destruction.

Ultimately, the explosives beneath the house are nearly set off by Eric and are saved by Frank, which shows in some ways a turn away from the desire for destruction and the acceptance of a different kind of power in Frank — one of stewardship. It is an adult power that most serial killers never reach.

Two Perspectives on Mental Health

I keep telling myself that I’m not a big fan of gothic literature, and then I read a story like The Wasp Factory, which hits all the main points of gothic: locked rooms in remote “castles”, family secrets, isolation… and I realize maybe I really do like it after all. Another gothic aspect in the book was the mirroring of Eric and Frank. Whether you want to see Eric as a part of Frank’s imagination or a real person, they are doubles in the book.

Throughout the book it almost feels ironic that Eric is not the serial killer. After all, he’s the one that is exhibiting all of the signs of wilding with his killing of dogs and chasing after children with maggots. But instead it is Frank with his constant routine and restrained rituals that is the one killing other children. Because of his restraint, Frank goes nearly unnoticed in his violence whereas Eric’s wilding has landed him in a mental institution.

Throughout the book it’s clear that both Eric and Frank are insane. Neither of them has a healthy, clear picture of the world. But Eric’s insanity is noticed and feared because it is unleashed on the wider world, even if it is not as potentially harmful as Frank’s. When we get into serial killer fiction, most of the stories are told from the perspective of a controlled killer, not a wilding killer. Those stories about a wilding killer are usually told from the POV of someone more sane — the detective, the profiler, the family member, or the potential victim. I suppose this is because it is difficult for a reader to relate to the internal monologue of a person who has gone completely devoid of reason as opposed to those that have a structured logic to their actions. Even if the serial killer’s logic is something we cannot relate to, it is something we can understand.

That being said, the deeper we dig into Eric’s story, the more his actions begin to make sense. Of course he lights dogs on fire — he sees Saul’s attack as taking his little sister from him and giving him, instead, a psychotic little brother. Him chasing children with maggots is obviously him trying to deal with seeing an infant’s brain being eaten by maggots in the hospital where he interned. Every action, no matter how insane, is backed up with the tiniest sliver of logic (at least in literature) which allows us empathy for the killers. In real life, we are not afforded those bits of logic, and so all we have is confusion as to why and how. We long for those stories that fill in the gap and assure us that no matter how wild a man may be, they are still human.

A Madness Shared By Two

If Eric is not a projection of Frank but an actual character in the book, then it is a character that is bringing Frank into his own form of madness. At the beginning of the book, Frank has created a rhythm on the island that works for him. He isn’t planning on murdering anymore, has somewhat settled his violence (except for the occasional rabbit massacre) and he has come to terms with his life. The book revolves around Eric’s escape from the asylum and his slow homecoming. The closer he gets, the more he pulls Frank into his brand of madness, slowly chipping away at the small amounts of stability Frank has been able to build in his life.

Perhaps because I went into this thinking it was a serial killer book, I was constantly on edge for a tipping point. Either Eric or Frank would give into the desire to kill, which is what seemed to be happening each time Eric called Frank, pulling him away from the comparative safety of ritual and into chaos. Again, the irony is not lost on me that it is within the confines of ritual that the murders happened, while it is slipping into wilding madness where fear is felt.

The Wasp Factory

The wasp factory is mentioned throughout the story — Frank talks about keeping it a secret in the attic loft, about using it to divine current and future events, and about collecting wasps for it. But the actual apparatus doesn’t make an appearance until after halfway through the book. As a reader, this was at times almost frustrating… let’s just get to the main event. But it is only by holding off on the revelation of the wasp factory and thorough establishment of the confines and workings of the island (and town) that we can see, once the wasp factory is revealed, that Frank has been in a wasp factory all along. Although at that point Frank is unaware of just how constructed his reality has been, it is clear that he’s living in a place that has been heavily defined by his father and the pressures of external society. Without a birth certificate, there is no escape, and so he can make his cage more elaborate, but he can not escape.

As the book progresses into Eric’s story, we begin to see the wasp factory is not only the island, but the greater world. We are all crawling along a series of chambers, choosing our ultimate deaths while unable to see the entirety of the structure that holds us. One would think that in a story about societal pressure and inevitability, the archetype of the serial killer would be used to break out of the standard structure. However, it is the father breaking from societal structure, taking Frank with him, that leads to the development of the serial killer. In other words — serial killers are just one inevitability when we are pushed down certain paths.

People seem to think the wasp factory ends in an optimistic way — Frank embracing her newfound gender and getting off the island — out of the factory. I have a more pessimistic read on it. That although she learns of her father’s control and lies and gets off the island, it is set up with the overlapping factories that the entirety of the world is just one more wasp factory. She is resigned to this and, though willing to explore other paths, knows that they all end in death and destruction. However, this ending is what makes me think the book is not actually a serial killer book — because without the confines of the island, I don’t think she will kill again.

Parental Control

I’d say parental control gets to both the meat of The Wasp Factory and the meat of serial killer fiction. In The Wasp Factory, it actually seems like Frank is giving free movement around the island and in the town. He’s allowed to do almost anything he wants and his father doesn’t question his whereabouts or actions. It’s a high level of freedom for a teenager. Of course, Frank is tied to the island through his father’s choice to not register his birth, but that was one act of rebellion on his father’s part. As the book goes on, we see more and more of his father’s control — from keeping the weaponry away from Frank to forcing him to learn all the measurements in the house, to toying with Frank’s schooling, peppering in inaccuracies to warp Frank’s understanding of the greater world. It is only at the end we learn the extent of the father’s control — that he has rewritten Frank as a boy due to his own misogynistic tendencies. At that point, the amount of control the father is exerting is completely believable, if only because we’ve seen the father’s gaslighting recurring throughout the book and because he’s sus as hell with the locked room.

Parental control is one of the most common themes in serial killer fiction — the parent who blurs reality enough for the child to emerge with no sense of morality. But what we usually see is a picture of the parental delusions imprinted on the child. They are so constrained by the parent’s reality that when they struggle against it, they kill. And when they give into it, they kill. Instead, what we see in The Wasp Factory is a teen who, as a small child, was wrapped in their father’s re-writing of reality. And in that example of ultimate control over the surroundings, they murdered. However, as a teen, they are able to see the parent’s falsehoods for what they are — they gain access to education outside of the home. They gain a sense of reality beyond the confines of their parent’s insanity. And in that, they are able to (perhaps) find a sense of freedom. It doesn’t seem like a coincidence that the murders seem to stop around the age that Frank starts going to the library, double checking his father’s education. In seeking out the stability of “reality” the budding serial killer is able to turn their back on killing.

Sex and Gender

The biggest twist in the book is that Frank is not actually Frank, but Frances. He was born a girl. When the dog attacked his genitalia as a toddler, his father used that moment to raise him as a boy, regularly dosing him with testosterone. We never learn why his father does this, though we do get the idea that the father was severely hurt by Frank’s carefree, independent mother and was highly misogynistic. Raising Frank as a boy allowed him to rid himself completely of women. Frank absolutely and completely swallows Angus’ misogyny. What’s slightly ironic is that we don’t see Agnus’ misogyny on page. Angus ranges from caring to aloof but we never see him angry, scared, or mean. All we have to gather that he must be misogynistic is the interaction between him and Frank’s mother, in which she steels his motorcycle and permanently damages his knee. We can assume that Frank’s misogyny stems from that interaction, but we don’t actually see it. The other hint is that so much of Frank’s worldview has been absorbed from Angus, and we think his hate for women is so extreme that it must come from something.

At first, we assume it might come from the mutilation of his genitalia. Throughout the book, Frank mourns that he will never be a “full man” because he no longer has male genitalia. He holds a lot of anger over his status as an “honorary man”. (His words, not mine). Because of this he goes above and beyond to prove his masculine self through violence and becoming lord of his island, and we think his hate of women stems from him being somewhere between man and woman. To Frank, the worst thing he could be considered is a woman, and because he no longer has the ability to penetrate with a penis, he lives in fear of being the thing he hates most. (And later we see this hate was driven not by his own internalized feelings of inadequacy, but by his father’s disdain for women).

For the majority of the book we see Frank trying to compensate with a more masculine gender because of his mutilated genitalia. (Later, we might also wonder how much of his urge to destroy and blow things up and kill is driven by large doses of testosterone given to him from a young age). He begrudges the feminine aspects he can recognize in all of his male counterparts. He frequently describes Eric as the feminine one and his father as delicate or feminine. To Frank, men who have their genitalia in tact are afforded the “fault” of femininity whereas he must snuff out every bit of femininity in himself to claim his spot as a man. Banks says a lot about gender as far as learning, choosing, inherent gender, physical sex, hormones, and socialization –> and cleverly in a way the reader doesn’t realize they’re in this journey until the end revelation. What is a bit of a let down is that in the end although a bit ambiguous, it seems that Frank learns he was born a girl and immediately embraces this identity, including magically dropping a lifetime of misogyny that has been carefully spilled into him by his father — the author gives less than a chapter to this realization and acceptance, and I wish there was a bit more. But I also get stopping at this point — that can bleed into another full novel or two.

Sex and gender is such a constant topic in humanity that it’s no wonder it crops up repeatedly in serial killer books. Not only are we constantly fighting within society to define gender, we’re also constantly struggling to fit into a gender or make a gender fit us. One of the most common tropes in serial killer fiction is the male killer who was emasculated by an adult woman as a young child, and as an adult he seeks to reclaim his masculinity by killing (usually females, and often in a penetrative manner). It’s only been in the past fifteen years or so (maybe even more recent) that female serial killers have exploded on the lit scene, and of those I’ve read, almost none of the killers have been sex and gender motivated or, not as clearly sex and gender motivated as the historic male serial killers. Of those who have been sex and gender motivated, it tended to deal with sexual abuse and, while male serial killers can have experienced sexual abuse, the abuse is almost second-place to the emasculation of the character whereas with a female serial killer the pain of the assault, and that it is expected in our lives, becomes the pure rage that fills her — and often forgives her for her — actions.

I could probably write an entire book on sex and gender and serial killers, and more academically minded people have already done so. For now I will just say that while this book read entirely as a normal “emasculated man seeks to define his masculinity through violence” book, the ending twist makes the reader realize we’re in a wasp factory of gender. The very construction of it is snicking doors shut behind us, trapping us day after day.

Obviously, I’ve droned on too long about this book that is, in my mind, not even a serial killer book. But it left me a lot to chew on, and I can solidly say that if it’s lingering on your TBR, bump it up. It’s an amazing read.

Honestly, I’m not sure what’s next in this series. I’m eyeing They Never Learn by Layne Fargo, which releases next month, and I’ve been considering going down the female rage lens for awhile. But I also want to give Zombie a go and cross some books off my list. I might also take a little break for some non-serial killer books. So, we’ll see. If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me.