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Old 01-24-2020, 07:06 PM   #2789
sun surfer
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I started and finished The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks read by Stephen Kenny. It's sort of a black comedy drama thriller set in the early 1980s about an isolated, odd and possibly sociopathic teen boy who lives with his father just off the coast of a small town in Scotland connected by a bridge to their own island. He has an older brother who is insane and in a mental institution, and has escaped.

None of the shown Goodreads genre shelves for it listed humour, so I wasn't expecting it to be funny, especially for how dark it is (and it's very very dark... this book is the blackest of black humour). There were some parts that were so funny I unexpectedly laughed out loud, and there was one part in particular that was so funny I had to stop the audiobook until I was done laughing, and then rewind and listen to it again so I could start laughing again. It had to do with someone's last words and I'll leave it at that.

However, this is not only a dark book, it's a gross and violent book, especially towards animals, and I'm sure some people would have trouble reading some of it. I'm personally not a fan of realistic and descriptive violence in books (hence not generally being a big fan of war books and such), but I am okay with off-screen(/off-scene) violence or with it treated less realistically or not going into detail about it. It's odd in that I'd say this book's treatment of violence towards animals is disturbing while its treatment of violence towards humans - including children for goodness sake! - is less realistic and, dare I say, even bleakly funny at times. But I still found the sadistic violence against animals very off-putting and stomach-churning. Still, I have to say I was impressed by the story and its unique perspective and despite that integral aspect that I didn't like at all, I really liked the book overall by the end.
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