Wasps...

Good morning everyone!

 

well I had a delayed start to the writing schedule this morning while a man from the local council got rid of some annoying wasps that had decided to make themselves at home under some roof tiles over the kitchen window. Thankfully it seems to have worked!

 

And it got me thinking about a novel that I bought sometime around 1992/93 while waiting for a train at Reading station, The Wasp Factory by the much missed Iain Banks. It was the first novel by him and was published in 1984. I have re-read it many times over the last 20 years and am always surprised/shocked/invigorated when I do read it. It truly is a masterpiece and I highly recommend it, as well as Banks's other novels (Espedair Street is another of my favourites).

 

 

 

 

 

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.

 

Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.

 

 

 

Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of smart moves he'll regret forever (however long that turns out to be). Daniel Weir has gone from rags to riches and back, and managed to hold onto them both, though not much else. His friends all seem to be dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them?