Far Too Strange: The Early Fiction of Iain Banks

[...]the three stories seem to collapse into each other, and there's a suggestion that the story of Quiss and Ajayi really is an actualization of Grout's delusion. [...]on the few occasions when he can go into the nearby town, it is to lose control in another way by getting hopelessly drun...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFoundation (Dagenham) Vol. 42; no. 116; p. 23
Main Author Kincaid, Paul
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Dagenham Science Fiction Foundation 01.12.2012
Subjects
British & Irish literature
English literature
Fiction
Golding, William (1911-1993)
Scottish literature
Stevenson, Robert Louis (1850-1894)
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Summary:[...]the three stories seem to collapse into each other, and there's a suggestion that the story of Quiss and Ajayi really is an actualization of Grout's delusion. [...]on the few occasions when he can go into the nearby town, it is to lose control in another way by getting hopelessly drunk. [...]within this disconnected existence, he lives in a miasma of untruth: 'If I was lucky, my father might tell me something and, if I was luckier still, it might even be the truth' (Banks 1984: 8). [...]Frank's cartoonish exaggeration of all things male means that when we arrive at the final revelation of his sex, the divided nature of his character is emphasized. [...]he is too simple a character to be as divided as Banks's other protagonists. [...]this is a reading that places the novel squarely in the tradition of the Scottish fantastic. Because The Wasp Factory shows us only one reality, as alienating and disconcerting as that may be, the question of which reality is privileged does not arise.
ISSN:0306-4964