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The Job of the Wasp
A new arrival at an isolated school for orphaned boys quickly comes to realize there is something wrong with his new home. He hears chilling whispers in the night, his troubled classmates are violent and hostile, and the Headmaster sends cryptic messages, begging his new charge to confess. As the new boy learns to survive on the edges of this impolite society, he starts to unravel a mystery at the school's dark heart. And that’s when the corpses start turning up.
A coming-of-age tale, a Gothic ghost story, and an obsessive murder mystery all-in-one, The Job of the Wasp is a bloodcurdling and brilliantly subversive novel about paranoia, love, and the nightmare of adolescence.
A coming-of-age tale, a Gothic ghost story, and an obsessive murder mystery all-in-one, The Job of the Wasp is a bloodcurdling and brilliantly subversive novel about paranoia, love, and the nightmare of adolescence.
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 9, 2018
30 people are currently reading
2166 people want to read
About the author
Colin Winnette
20 books150 followersColin Winnette is an American novelist, short story writer, and poet. He is the author of several works of fiction: Revelation (Mutable Sound 2011), Animal Collection (Spork Press 2012), Fondly (Atticus Books 2013), Coyote (Les Figues Press 2015), and Haints Stay (Two Dollar Radio 2015). His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Playboy, Lucky Peach, The American Reader, The Believer, Gulf Coast Magazine, and 9th Letter. He was the winner of Les Figues Press's 2013 NOS Book Contest, for his novel Coyote.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 177 reviews
September 25, 2018
I heard the laughter of several boys in a group. I've heard few things more chilling.
This is one of the strangest stories I've read, and also one of the most unsettling. I hesitate to shelf it as horror, as the chills engendered by the author are not the type that keep you up all night, or haunt your dreams if you do manage to drop off . . . and yet, the book is every bit as creepy as its disturbing, fleshy-looking cover.
As many reviewers have mentioned, the Lord of the Flies vibe is strong here, as unsupervised boys turn on one another. But, there's definitely something different about this tale . . .
"When my parents died," he said, "my outlook on the world changed."
"You began to see it all as a maelstrom of life and death, a vast chaotic harmony in which the turning of a leaf carries no more significance than that of a human life," I said.
"No," said Nick. "I decided to believe in ghosts."
Our nameless narrator, an orphan sent to an institution, keeps discovering bodies. Well, that's rather odd . . .
"Who is dead?" he said.
"There are two already," I said. "And I assure you the situation is likely to yield more by the end."
"How did they die?"
"They were murdered."
He went white.
"It's started," he said.
"Twice," I said.
"No," he said. "It's the ghost. There will be five."
As things progress, the reader has no idea who to believe . . .
"What makes the most sense," he said, "based on all that we know, is that one of the boys in our cohort is not a boy at all but a spirit haunting these halls."
Who is alive, and who is . . . dead?
"For the longest time," he said, "I thought it was me."
If you're looking for a different kind of spooky read for October, this one might just fit the bill.
This is one of the strangest stories I've read, and also one of the most unsettling. I hesitate to shelf it as horror, as the chills engendered by the author are not the type that keep you up all night, or haunt your dreams if you do manage to drop off . . . and yet, the book is every bit as creepy as its disturbing, fleshy-looking cover.
As many reviewers have mentioned, the Lord of the Flies vibe is strong here, as unsupervised boys turn on one another. But, there's definitely something different about this tale . . .
"When my parents died," he said, "my outlook on the world changed."
"You began to see it all as a maelstrom of life and death, a vast chaotic harmony in which the turning of a leaf carries no more significance than that of a human life," I said.
"No," said Nick. "I decided to believe in ghosts."
Our nameless narrator, an orphan sent to an institution, keeps discovering bodies. Well, that's rather odd . . .
"Who is dead?" he said.
"There are two already," I said. "And I assure you the situation is likely to yield more by the end."
"How did they die?"
"They were murdered."
He went white.
"It's started," he said.
"Twice," I said.
"No," he said. "It's the ghost. There will be five."
As things progress, the reader has no idea who to believe . . .
"What makes the most sense," he said, "based on all that we know, is that one of the boys in our cohort is not a boy at all but a spirit haunting these halls."
Who is alive, and who is . . . dead?
"For the longest time," he said, "I thought it was me."
If you're looking for a different kind of spooky read for October, this one might just fit the bill.
November 6, 2017
Right from the start, The Job of the Wasp is utterly disquieting. Everything about it just feels somehow off, though it's difficult to put your finger on exactly what the problem is. Perhaps it's the fact that the story is ostensibly narrated by a boy at boarding school, but nothing about the narrative voice sounds like any child or teenager you have ever encountered. Perhaps it's that the time period and geographical setting are so unclear. Perhaps it's even that the title and inexplicably unsettling cover don't seem to say anything about the story.
I was slightly inaccurate just now in referring to the setting a boarding school. To be more precise, it is (according to the Headmaster) 'a temporary holding facility with mandatory educational elements'. After the first page, our narrator – who lacks a name himself – only ever calls it 'the facility'. The Headmaster keeps reminding the narrator that the latter's presence means the facility is 'one person beyond capacity'. The narrator hears laughter outside his bedroom window during the night. He's bigger than the other boys, which leads to a long, borderline-farcical conversation about the bagginess of trousers. He seems to be disliked by his fellow residents (plus he can barely tell them apart), and his discussions with the Headmaster lead to existential monologues like this:
At this early stage, it is impossible to avoid notes of absurdity and amusement in the story. But then the narrator and another boy find the body of a teacher, and it quickly spirals into a paranoid, claustrophobic nightmare. It doesn't quite lose its sense of humour, as the narrator spins outlandish and horrible fantasies about every new suspicion, but at the same time provides an uncomfortably realistic idea of what it's like to suffer paranoid delusions.
I would place The Job of the Wasp next to The Children's Home, I'm Thinking of Ending Things and Fever Dream in a small but significant category of recent fiction that combines nightmarish imagery, symbolism, elements of traditional horror, and narratives that move beyond unreliability and into unreality. I found it weirdly powerful, compelling and totally sui generis. But if surrealism isn't your thing, if you like everything explained and resolved, give this one a miss – it's stubbornly enigmatic.
I received an advance review copy of The Job of the Wasp from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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I was slightly inaccurate just now in referring to the setting a boarding school. To be more precise, it is (according to the Headmaster) 'a temporary holding facility with mandatory educational elements'. After the first page, our narrator – who lacks a name himself – only ever calls it 'the facility'. The Headmaster keeps reminding the narrator that the latter's presence means the facility is 'one person beyond capacity'. The narrator hears laughter outside his bedroom window during the night. He's bigger than the other boys, which leads to a long, borderline-farcical conversation about the bagginess of trousers. He seems to be disliked by his fellow residents (plus he can barely tell them apart), and his discussions with the Headmaster lead to existential monologues like this:
'It's either that I'm scared of everything at night,' I explained, 'or, underneath my daily habits, I am in a state of constant fear obscured by the action of the day, so that as I lie in bed and the rest of the world grows quiet, that general state of fear moves to the front of my mind at a similar rate, grafting onto one subject after another—what I might be hearing outside my window, why there is no moon visible through the glass when, by my calculations, there should be, what another boy in the facility might someday do to me, what might happen to all of us in the future, where this building will be in one thousand years, what was here one thousand years before, whether or not I will live as long as I might like to, if something will abruptly cut things short, or if living too long will bring its own unspeakable horrors—the list is endless, and because no item on the list represents on its own the actual, primary source of my fear, it can't be reasoned away, put down, thought out, or fully dealt with. I can only cycle through the endless possibilities, exhausting each item before moving on to the next.'
At this early stage, it is impossible to avoid notes of absurdity and amusement in the story. But then the narrator and another boy find the body of a teacher, and it quickly spirals into a paranoid, claustrophobic nightmare. It doesn't quite lose its sense of humour, as the narrator spins outlandish and horrible fantasies about every new suspicion, but at the same time provides an uncomfortably realistic idea of what it's like to suffer paranoid delusions.
I would place The Job of the Wasp next to The Children's Home, I'm Thinking of Ending Things and Fever Dream in a small but significant category of recent fiction that combines nightmarish imagery, symbolism, elements of traditional horror, and narratives that move beyond unreliability and into unreality. I found it weirdly powerful, compelling and totally sui generis. But if surrealism isn't your thing, if you like everything explained and resolved, give this one a miss – it's stubbornly enigmatic.
I received an advance review copy of The Job of the Wasp from the publisher through Edelweiss.
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January 17, 2018
Imagine Lord of Flies if it were a surreal, gothic ghost story written by Jesse Ball. That's the best way I can describe this bizarre little book.
The Job of the Wasp begins with an unnamed narrator showing up at a mysterious facility for orphaned boys. We, the reader, are dropped directly into this strange and eerie world where everything and everyone functions in a peculiar and unreliable manner. This is creepy, this persistent sense of the unknown.
The narrator tries to fit in at the facility, but is met with a range of indifference and hostility. Then the bodies start turning up, and things get really weird.
Racked with dread, isolation and increasing paranoia, the narrator attempts to formulate a plan to save himself and his peers from the strange facility, only to learn that his role in all of it may not be what it seems.
This is a creepy, darkly funny and cerebral book with some truly thought-provoking passages about the nature of reality, life, and death. The concept of control also plays a big part, as the narrator consistently struggles to take control of what's happening while simultaneously accepting "the unrestrained chaos of the world."
Ultimately, though, I'm not sure I fully get the plot. Maybe I'm not supposed to. I enjoy the obscureness of surreal entertainment, but in cases such as this one I can't help but wish that the author had taken me just one step further toward a sense of cohesion. Jesse Ball always seems to nail this, which sets the bar high for other writers of surreal literature.
In spite of feeling slightly disappointed with The Job of the Wasp as a whole, I'm always grateful for the opportunity to read a novel like this that's so intelligent and bizarre. The narrative itself gets 3 stars, but the dialogue and writing are so good that I can't give this anything less than 4.
The Job of the Wasp begins with an unnamed narrator showing up at a mysterious facility for orphaned boys. We, the reader, are dropped directly into this strange and eerie world where everything and everyone functions in a peculiar and unreliable manner. This is creepy, this persistent sense of the unknown.
The narrator tries to fit in at the facility, but is met with a range of indifference and hostility. Then the bodies start turning up, and things get really weird.
Racked with dread, isolation and increasing paranoia, the narrator attempts to formulate a plan to save himself and his peers from the strange facility, only to learn that his role in all of it may not be what it seems.
This is a creepy, darkly funny and cerebral book with some truly thought-provoking passages about the nature of reality, life, and death. The concept of control also plays a big part, as the narrator consistently struggles to take control of what's happening while simultaneously accepting "the unrestrained chaos of the world."
Ultimately, though, I'm not sure I fully get the plot. Maybe I'm not supposed to. I enjoy the obscureness of surreal entertainment, but in cases such as this one I can't help but wish that the author had taken me just one step further toward a sense of cohesion. Jesse Ball always seems to nail this, which sets the bar high for other writers of surreal literature.
In spite of feeling slightly disappointed with The Job of the Wasp as a whole, I'm always grateful for the opportunity to read a novel like this that's so intelligent and bizarre. The narrative itself gets 3 stars, but the dialogue and writing are so good that I can't give this anything less than 4.
November 24, 2017
This was my first date with Colin Winnette, and will most definitely not be my last.
I inhaled this book in nearly one sitting. Equal parts Lord of the Flies, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and Turn of the Screw, we follow an increasingly unreliable and highly paranoid narrator as he becomes confusingly entangled in a series of mysterious murders that take place at a boarding house of sorts for terminally ill and problematic boys (aka the Facility).
Page after peculiar page, I was pulled deeper into Winnette's world, and though I had an inkling of where things were heading, much like our nameless orphan, I continuously second guessed myself as I pushed on, running the scenearios over and over again in my head.
Well played, Colin. Very well played.
I inhaled this book in nearly one sitting. Equal parts Lord of the Flies, I'm Thinking of Ending Things, and Turn of the Screw, we follow an increasingly unreliable and highly paranoid narrator as he becomes confusingly entangled in a series of mysterious murders that take place at a boarding house of sorts for terminally ill and problematic boys (aka the Facility).
Page after peculiar page, I was pulled deeper into Winnette's world, and though I had an inkling of where things were heading, much like our nameless orphan, I continuously second guessed myself as I pushed on, running the scenearios over and over again in my head.
Well played, Colin. Very well played.
November 9, 2017
I've got to say that I was confused through most of this book. There were glimpses of some good creepy scenes but my mind just couldn't fully grasp what was happening. Maybe it's me. Maybe I just didn't get it.
This is well written and other reviewers seem to of enjoyed it so by all means give it a try if it sounds interesting to you.
Thank you to Edelweiss for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
This is well written and other reviewers seem to of enjoyed it so by all means give it a try if it sounds interesting to you.
Thank you to Edelweiss for providing me with a digital ARC in exchange for my honest review.
dnf
January 29, 2018Too strange, cold, and emotionally-detached for my tastes. I should have probably felt something when the corpses started to show up, but I didn't.
October 12, 2018
will come back when i'm not at work and can use my book copy to write up something!
Okay, it's been a while unfortunately, so I can't really leave a well-worded, descriptive review. i will say that this book appealed to me because it was dark and a bit spooky, with existential angst and twisted humor thrown in there too. add in an unreliable narrator and you got me.
Okay, it's been a while unfortunately, so I can't really leave a well-worded, descriptive review. i will say that this book appealed to me because it was dark and a bit spooky, with existential angst and twisted humor thrown in there too. add in an unreliable narrator and you got me.
January 18, 2018
I can't help but wonder "What did I miss?" as I look through the reviews on Goodreads and elsewhere. The book is about an orphanage for young boys and a mysterious set of deaths (accidents? murders? suicides?) and potentially supernatural perpetrators. It seems like it's Lord of the Flies-esque at some parts--a Jack/Ralph battle emerges a bit between the narrator and Anders/Fry. But it's quickly the case that Fry is the leader, so there ends that direct parallel. It's hard to say this is a consideration of groupthink or (im)morality, and I'm not sure what else to make of this. When I wonder "What did I miss?" it's not just a question of why did people like this story it's also, what did I miss in the story? I can't really figure out how this is a story. The only explanation I got from reading reviews was that this story was Poe-esque (it certainly was only Dickensian to the extent that it was set in an orphanage and written with narration and dialogue we wouldn't use today) in that the book ended abruptly right when the story seemed to get good. Here, it wasn't that it had gotten good right as it was ending. What I mean more is that it got to the point where it could have gotten good. There was some explanation from a character of things that might have been going on and then it could have gotten good. But we got no explanation of what has happened.
All I can say is we likely had an unreliable narrator, but with so many events that made no sense, and no illuminating explanations or resolution whatsoever I could not come up with an idea of what was the alternative to what this narrator was saying.
All I can say is we likely had an unreliable narrator, but with so many events that made no sense, and no illuminating explanations or resolution whatsoever I could not come up with an idea of what was the alternative to what this narrator was saying.
December 4, 2017
A Gothic Lord of the Flies filled with comedic horror from a unique voice.
January 29, 2018
A classical feeling goth novel with many other interesting elements. It is part murder mystery within a Lord Of The Flies-style setup. There are orphan boys trying to protect themselves from a perceived haunting and of course, the kid with psychopathic tendencies has risen to the top of their hierarchy. There is more to the story than that though. Our young narrator has just arrived at this crowded boys home and is not only finding it difficult to make friends with the other boys but can’t shake the feeling the headmaster is out to get him. As he carefully navigates the situation the bodies begin to pile up and he realizes things are not as they seem. The narrator continues to learn that he cannot trust anyone, sometimes even himself.
I really enjoyed this book and am becoming a serious fan of Winnette’s writing. He has a talent for gothic prose whether he is writing a Shirley Jackson style ghost story or a western like his awesome last novel Haint’s Stay. The Job Of The Wasp keeps the paranoia and unpredictability of a psychological thriller and the macabre violence of a horror story. This one will keep you on your toes until the end. I plan to maybe check out one of Winnette’s books previous to Haint’s Stay in the meantime while I wait for his new work. I hope he continues to write stories in this gothic style as he is proving himself to be incredibly skilled at it.
I really enjoyed this book and am becoming a serious fan of Winnette’s writing. He has a talent for gothic prose whether he is writing a Shirley Jackson style ghost story or a western like his awesome last novel Haint’s Stay. The Job Of The Wasp keeps the paranoia and unpredictability of a psychological thriller and the macabre violence of a horror story. This one will keep you on your toes until the end. I plan to maybe check out one of Winnette’s books previous to Haint’s Stay in the meantime while I wait for his new work. I hope he continues to write stories in this gothic style as he is proving himself to be incredibly skilled at it.
November 1, 2018
This is one of those unusual situations where I feel like the other Goodreads reviews for this book sum it up really accurately! (Nice job, y'all.) This is a surreal, kinda gothic-y, kinda horror-y book. (Appropriate blurb from Kelly Link on the back.) It's an exercise in mood. There are tropes and subversion of tropes. It's the kind of book where you are never really sure what is happening, what just happened, or what is going to happen. It doesn't let you get a reliable footing, once you think you've got a handle on it, that's when you realize you don't.
April 12, 2018
Since I read REVELATION, where his character shares icy beers with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, I have been continually amazed at Colin Winnette's originality. Through HAINTS STAY, a new Western for our age, and now in THE JOB OF THE WASP, Winnette's fresh writing continues to amaze and delight. An initiation story in the middle of a ghost story/murder mystery, THE JOB OF THE WASP is full of wit and surprise.
September 25, 2019
Une prémisse intéressante, mais une écriture tellement sèche et fade (peut-être est-ce la traduction...) et une intrigue très lente m'ont rapidement fait perdre de l'intérêt pour ce livre. Les commentaires sont très polarisé (2 étoiles ou 4-5), alors il semble s'agir d'une livre qu'on aime ou qu'on déteste. Je fais parti du deuxième groupe, sans dire que je le déteste, un livre beaucoup trop quelconque pour moi.
November 17, 2019
Intensely creepy, extremely witty, and beautifully written.
Reading this book, I envisioned Holden Caulfield in his dorm at Pencey with "The Omen" and "The Sixth Sense" tossed into the mixture just to make things interesting.
Winnette keeps the reader guessing throughout the book and even as it wrapped up, I was never entirely sure of the "existence" of the main character.
Completely engaging.
Reading this book, I envisioned Holden Caulfield in his dorm at Pencey with "The Omen" and "The Sixth Sense" tossed into the mixture just to make things interesting.
Winnette keeps the reader guessing throughout the book and even as it wrapped up, I was never entirely sure of the "existence" of the main character.
Completely engaging.
Read
October 8, 2017I read most of this novel in a single sitting, outdoors in eerie, uncomfortable weather on the edge of a hurricane to the south. Which I wouldn't usually mention in response to a book but in this case that climate so perfectly complemented the creepy, claustrophobic atmosphere of the story that it seems important.
Something I really like in Winnette's fiction is how he works in new modes from book to book, whether the apocalypse story or the western or, in this case, the boarding school novel. He swirls them together bringing different modes into tension or conflict, as your guesses at what's going to happen are stymied by wondering which genre's conventions to follow. That's definitely what happens here: the mechanisms of HOW the novel gets where it is going are engaging, and even when I thought I knew, to some extent, where they were headed, the manner of doing so made it fresh. Especially the voice, with its dispassionate, affectless precision — perhaps its the insect in the title, but I couldn't help describing this book as like the narrator of The Wasp Factory enrolled in Jakob von Gunten's Institute Benjamenta.
Something I really like in Winnette's fiction is how he works in new modes from book to book, whether the apocalypse story or the western or, in this case, the boarding school novel. He swirls them together bringing different modes into tension or conflict, as your guesses at what's going to happen are stymied by wondering which genre's conventions to follow. That's definitely what happens here: the mechanisms of HOW the novel gets where it is going are engaging, and even when I thought I knew, to some extent, where they were headed, the manner of doing so made it fresh. Especially the voice, with its dispassionate, affectless precision — perhaps its the insect in the title, but I couldn't help describing this book as like the narrator of The Wasp Factory enrolled in Jakob von Gunten's Institute Benjamenta.
January 29, 2018
Colin Winnette’s Haint’s Stay was one of the highlights of my 2016 reading, a hard hitting coming of age Western in the mould of McCarthy or Lansdale. This is totally different though, perhaps described as quite an English style gothic tale with an element of the supernatural, more with the influence of Henry James or Susan Hill. The setting is a boys’ orphanage, the only building for miles in a dark valley, strangely run by only a Headmaster and a solitary teacher. No location is given for the setting which seems more European than American. No age is given for the 30 odd boys, but from the clues given and I would guess at 11 to 12. The oddities don’t stop there. The story is narrated by an unpopular new boy whose reliability is doubtful. Lord of the Flies will be another influence, but the book is very much it’s own thing. It’s peculiarities found me searching for something similar I may have read, and failing. It all works though, as an original type of ghost story, and one that leaves a lot to the reader’s interpretation.
October 9, 2018
The Job of the Wasp was an enigmatic, unsettling, and occasionally frustrating reading experience. Everything about this book is set up to keep the reader off-balance, from the disturbingly fleshy cover to the narrator (a pubescent boy who sounds anything but) to the setting, which feels completely isolated and wholly outside of a specific time and place. It's atmospheric and strange and haunting in a quirky way. I read it very quickly and was engaged throughout, but found myself unsatisfied when I reached the conclusion. This is a book that asks a lot of questions, but doesn't really provide any answers. It doesn't give up its secrets easily, and mostly not at all. If that's not your thing, this isn't the book for you. I could appreciate it for what it was while still acknowledging that, although it's probably one of the weirdest books I've ever read, it likely won't make a lasting impression on me because it was simply too obscure.
June 23, 2018
While the writing was good, I found this one just too confusing and thus, uninteresting. I didn't care for the ending, either, which is abrupt and without any explanation of what the story meant and how it all came together.
I received this First Reads Goodreads book, in exchange for my honest opinion.
I received this First Reads Goodreads book, in exchange for my honest opinion.
February 25, 2018
Boring and confusing. The "children" speak like literary geniuses (really, "woe" used in casual conversation?) and there is too much internal dialogue. The ending is hardly surprising. At least it's short.
October 3, 2018
A winning, instant-classic-of-the-genre kind of novel, even despite some of its quirky flaws. A young boy arrives at a school for orphans and immediately things start going poorly. It isn't long before they get even worse, with dead bodies and ghosts and a general sense of mental instability among adults and children alike. While Winnette occasionally loses his grip on the storytelling, he keeps the pulse driving and keeps the eeriness growing. I was constantly surprised by the novel's turns and never got a true grip on it, to my great delight. And the conclusion literally took my breath away.
And MAN that cover is something else.
And MAN that cover is something else.
August 2, 2018
If you liked the style of the movie The Killing of a Sacred Deer, you MUST READ THIS!!
January 7, 2026
Dark weird uncomfortable academia, blurring the boundaries between self and other; life and death; harm and care. Didn’t fully pan out but I appreciate what it was trying to do.
December 31, 2017
The Home for Nonconvertible Boys,
children, in drafty rooms, they room,
the days, they breathe,
now swing down, little brother,
comes the night snatching behind you.
Chris Roberts, God in Increments
children, in drafty rooms, they room,
the days, they breathe,
now swing down, little brother,
comes the night snatching behind you.
Chris Roberts, God in Increments
January 16, 2018
At the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, "The Killing Of A Sacred Deer", a new film from acclaimed Greek Yorgos Lanthimos, has been all the rage. The slow, weird thriller about a soft-spoken and detached boy at the centre of a horrible incident, it captured people with the intentionally wooden acting, the eerie atmosphere, and the unanswered questions that it never even really presents.
Then Colin Winnette wrote a short little book that blows that film out of the water.
Concerning a strange young boy that arrives at an all-male orphanage, the novel is a gothic horror about murder, loneliness, and the mystique. The book posits questions almost every page and rarely answers them, masking every innocuous action or occurrence through the narrator's perverse outlook on everything. The paranoid boy sees a savage murderer in his principal, lying snakes in his fellow orphans, and death all over the orphanage itself. What parts of this are true is largely up to the reader as Winnette rarely does clear explanations, opting for really creepy descriptions and turns of phrase that turn even the simplest interaction sinister. Every character seems to speak like no normal person would, the weather always seems just a bit off, and the wasps figure prominently for no clear reason.
"The Job of The Wasp" is steeped in weirdness and revels in it. If you're not averse to a horror that is scary on atmosphere only, you might just love this. But don't go looking for answers and don't trust anyone.
Then Colin Winnette wrote a short little book that blows that film out of the water.
Concerning a strange young boy that arrives at an all-male orphanage, the novel is a gothic horror about murder, loneliness, and the mystique. The book posits questions almost every page and rarely answers them, masking every innocuous action or occurrence through the narrator's perverse outlook on everything. The paranoid boy sees a savage murderer in his principal, lying snakes in his fellow orphans, and death all over the orphanage itself. What parts of this are true is largely up to the reader as Winnette rarely does clear explanations, opting for really creepy descriptions and turns of phrase that turn even the simplest interaction sinister. Every character seems to speak like no normal person would, the weather always seems just a bit off, and the wasps figure prominently for no clear reason.
"The Job of The Wasp" is steeped in weirdness and revels in it. If you're not averse to a horror that is scary on atmosphere only, you might just love this. But don't go looking for answers and don't trust anyone.
October 27, 2017
The Job of the Wasp is a tense, paranoid novel; it’s the kind of book to sink into on a stormy winter night and read in one sitting (preferably while sipping hot tea).
Our unnamed narrator arrives at a home for orphaned boys. Rather than a warm welcome, he is greeted by faces that meld together, a disturbingly disinterested headmaster, unknown assailants, and an endless array of corpses that keep popping up at inconvenient times. Part ghost story, part boarding school story, the terror of this book ranges from bloodless veins to cultish friend groups to the peculiar horror of a strong scent of pumpkin.
In a voice that is eerily dispassionate, cold, and precise, the boy relates these strange events while also considering the nature of human responsibility to the other, and particularly what it means to commit an act of violence against another. What is the job of the wasp? What do we owe to those around us? He tracks an ever-shifting killer, turning in circles, following the same trajectory, endlessly. The killer is both within and without, and the investigation of these murders unfolds like a theatrical production, culminating in a mind-melting ending.
Our unnamed narrator arrives at a home for orphaned boys. Rather than a warm welcome, he is greeted by faces that meld together, a disturbingly disinterested headmaster, unknown assailants, and an endless array of corpses that keep popping up at inconvenient times. Part ghost story, part boarding school story, the terror of this book ranges from bloodless veins to cultish friend groups to the peculiar horror of a strong scent of pumpkin.
In a voice that is eerily dispassionate, cold, and precise, the boy relates these strange events while also considering the nature of human responsibility to the other, and particularly what it means to commit an act of violence against another. What is the job of the wasp? What do we owe to those around us? He tracks an ever-shifting killer, turning in circles, following the same trajectory, endlessly. The killer is both within and without, and the investigation of these murders unfolds like a theatrical production, culminating in a mind-melting ending.
February 5, 2018
When a satirist thanks both Henry James and Haley Joel Osment in his acknowledgments, you know he could use a bit of focus. About 60% of "The Job of the Wasp" skewers "Lord of the Flies" about as well as the title promises, as an orphanage full of unsupervised boys degenerates into a mob of prolix, grandiloquent savages. The pudgy, nameless, verbose narrator may even be a postmodern lampoon of Piggy. But Mr. Winnette isn't satisfied with a single target, so he aims his mockery at a number of targets, including ghost stories, 19th century philosophical novels, and, I'm fairly sure, the video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler. So "The Job of the Wasp" is fairly amusing, but every now and then it falls apart.
February 27, 2018
Strange and sinister. This book is very hard to describe, but suffice to say that the setting is an orphanage filled with adolescent males. Bodies are piling up and who is telling the truth? This novel is sort of a cross between Lord of the Flies, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle.
July 21, 2018
I wholeheartedly enjoyed the first third of this book, the cat and mouse game of words with the headmaster, but as the book dragged on I didn't care for the, "who done it" type of internal narrative by the main character. The final scene was just a bland twist with a dull ending.
January 6, 2018
Exceptionally well-written Gothic tale of loneliness and horror. Is there anything Colin Winnette can't do?
March 3, 2018
Quite the enjoyable rabbit hole to duck into: the narrator's voice, surprising mortalities, and the narrator's entertaining leaps of illogic when confronted with such.
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