The Job of the Wasp

October 23, 2017
Winnette’s sinister novel (after Haints Stay) begins with a Dickensian premise, as the narrator (unnamed for most of the book) is enrolled in a draconian school for orphans which, its headmaster brags, is “not a school.... It is a temporary holding facility with mandatory education elements.” Things quickly take a change for the weird when the headmaster singles out the narrator for special treatment, after which his rivals and bullies among the student body begin turning up dead. As corpses pile up, the narrator falls under suspicion, a possibility he refuses to discount even as he tries to solve the mystery. His ensuing investigation results in a death by wasp’s nest, runs afoul of a pair of sadistic twins, and begins to suggest that the school is not what it seems, but some kind of “purgatory of adolescence.” But who is the killer? Though the novel is tricked out with too many reversals, obfuscations, surreal characters, and seemingly random twists, it’s commendable for its experimentation: its oddness evokes Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten and Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz. This is a worthwhile novel for readers of the dark and twisted, who will find both in spades.

November 1, 2017
A psychological ghost story featuring foul deeds, grizzly deaths, and the horrific nature of the human mind.Winnette (Haints Stay, 2015, etc.) has throughout his career demonstrated an affinity for toying with the conventions of genre; here, in his sixth book, he takes on the realm of the gothic. An unnamed narrator has just lost his parents and is sent away to a state-run facility for orphaned boys. A natural outcast, he finds his new home isolating, his fellow students cruel, and the headmaster vicious and creepy. Once the corpses begin to appear, however, it becomes clear there's something far scarier afoot than the trials and tribulations of fitting in. Winnette's ghastly vision, which would be right at home in the minds of Guillermo Del Toro or Shirley Jackson, is disturbing from beginning to end. The narrator's voice contains an emotionless chill that gradually gets under the reader's skin like the endless ticking of a clock, and his profoundly intellectual consciousness, while at times too long-winded, energizes the novel's somewhat generic plot without ever betraying its eerily placid tone.Winnette has conjured a profoundly unsettling story from the murky depths of his imagination; once it clicks, giggles, and slithers into your mind, it's nearly impossible to dislodge.

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Starred review from December 1, 2017

Writing as if in reaction to the glut of rapid-paced thrillers that read more like screenplays or plot points with dialog, Winnette (Haints Stay) exhibits a triumph of patience--exceedingly rare in young authors--and a gothic introspection that is a welcome antidote. That the novel spans but some 208 pages seems to belie even the possibility of the Henry James-like style with which its credited, but that observations is accurate. Not only does the author take considerable license with the classic unreliable narrator, he invests nearly the entire cast of roughly 30 orphaned boys and their headmaster with that quality, which makes for an odd effect: relentless tension throughout a story of moderate pace. Are there hostile ghosts menacing the facility? Is our young protagonist, who arrives at the orphanage a sociopath, obsessed with sex or merely a healthy lad in control of his emotions? These questions cannot be answered by way of accepted tropes, and readers will marvel at how little is known of human psychology. VERDICT This deeply haunting mix of literary aesthetics, murder mystery, and the dark intensity of contemporary thriller will be savored by fans of Jac Jemc's The Grip of It, Donna Tartt's The Secret History, Marisha Pessl's Night Film, and Peter Straub's Shadowlands.--William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

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