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A review by georgesreads
The Job of the Wasp by Colin Winnette
3.0
Gothic, surreal and frankly bizarre, The Job Of The Wasp by Colin Winnette, is very much a book you can judge by its cover. I'm not sure how I can sell this to you as a reader- it's just plain weird. From the strange but beautiful prose, to the completely mercurial plot, to the even more unpredictable and volatile characters- it is weird.
I liked it.
The book comes in at just over 200 pages, so is a fun way to spend an evening- if your idea of fun is rocking yourself back and forth on the floor wondering what you just put yourself through. We begin when our narrator is "welcomed," to his new "home." The headmaster offers no false pretences about the orphanage, promising only survival- not comfort. As he meets his new cohabitants, he finds that he feels unwelcomed, unable to fit in, and an ominous sense of dread and despair. That's before he finds his teacher's corpse hidden in the garden- the first of many casualties.
The narrator himself is SO complicated, constantly losing and regaining my trust. Is he unreliable? Yes. No? perhaps. To be completely honest I'm still processing- a lot happens.
If Samanta Schweblin rewrote Philip Fracassi's "Boys In The Valley," whilst high on prescription drugs, this would be the result. I mean this in the best way possible, whether or not you enjoy the process, you NEED to know what's going on and HAVE to get to the end. It's an addictive page turner, which pushes the boundaries of the genre.
I liked it.
The book comes in at just over 200 pages, so is a fun way to spend an evening- if your idea of fun is rocking yourself back and forth on the floor wondering what you just put yourself through. We begin when our narrator is "welcomed," to his new "home." The headmaster offers no false pretences about the orphanage, promising only survival- not comfort. As he meets his new cohabitants, he finds that he feels unwelcomed, unable to fit in, and an ominous sense of dread and despair. That's before he finds his teacher's corpse hidden in the garden- the first of many casualties.
The narrator himself is SO complicated, constantly losing and regaining my trust. Is he unreliable? Yes. No? perhaps. To be completely honest I'm still processing- a lot happens.
If Samanta Schweblin rewrote Philip Fracassi's "Boys In The Valley," whilst high on prescription drugs, this would be the result. I mean this in the best way possible, whether or not you enjoy the process, you NEED to know what's going on and HAVE to get to the end. It's an addictive page turner, which pushes the boundaries of the genre.