Wasp, where is thy sting?

by Florence King

Book by King, Florence

Genres: Humor, Nonfiction

214 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

About the author

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1936 to a bookish British father and a tomboy American mother, Florence King spent her childhood living with her parents, her maternal grandmother, and her grandmother's maid.

King showed talent in French, but unable to pursue it as a major at American University, she switched to a dual major of history and English. She attended the University of Mississippi for graduate school, but did not complete her M.A. degree after discovering she could make a living as a writer.

King, who lived in Fredericksburg, Virginia at the time of her death, retired in 2002, but resumed writing a monthly column for National Review in 2006. She died on January 6, 2016 at the age of 80.

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a remarkable analysis of the essence of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Despite (or because of) its satirical bent, I actually gained insight into myself, even extending to my intense - desire? belief? - that good food can somehow result from a completely ignored pot full of ingredients that have been unceremoniously glopped together (although I do not feel a compulsive need to add Campbell's soup to everything). I also learned some interesting history: Florence King analyzes Lizzie Borden as the natural by-product of such an emotionally repressed culture. I had no idea that her father's and step-mother's murders occurred after a long-standing rift over the allocation of property that she and her sister had protested by refusing to eat with the rest of the family and by attending a different church. King asserts that she had initially intended to poison them, but unable to procure the poison, she finally dissolved into a murderous rage. Nonetheless, she kept a cool head after the murders and also adhered to an eerily familiar code of near-honest dishonesty when providing testimony about them.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wicked funny and full of great quotable lines. The chapter on religion is absolutely hysterical.