95. The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks.
When I first picked up this book, I found it impossible to put down.
I read it from cover to cover in one go, it was that good.
The book transports you into the mind of Frank, a young boy growing up on a small Island off the Scottish mainland.
This book left me mentally assaulted.
To give you an idea of Iain Banks debut novel see back cover blurbs below;
Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.
'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.'
A mighty imagination has arrived on the scene. (Mail On Sunday)
There is no denying the bizarre fertility of the author's imagination: his brilliant dialogue, his cruel humour... (Irish Times)
Read it if you dare. Weirdly talented. (Daily Express)
A brillaint book, barmy und barnacled with the grotesque. (New Statesman)
The Wasp Factory is a first novel not only of tremendous promise, but also of achievement, a minor masterpiece perhaps. (Punch)