The Job of the Wasp: A Novel

"A witty and grisly gothic unlike anything I’ve ever read. You should absolutely read this." --Kelly Link, author of Get in TroubleA 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 a 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.

Kelly Link, author of Get in Trouble

“A witty and grisly gothic unlike anything I’ve ever read. You should absolutely read this.”

Library Journal (starred review)

“Writing as if in reaction to the glut of rapid-paced thrillers that read more like screenplays or plot points with dialogue, Winnette . . . exhibits a triumph of patience―exceedingly rare in young authors―and a gothic introspection that is a welcome antidote . . . 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 Shadowland.”

San Francisco Chronicle

“Colin Winnette's short, sharp shock of a novel will convince readers that only the worst can happen among a gloomy collection of administrators, teachers and students. . . . Winnette saturates The Job of the Wasp with odd incidents designed to keep readers perpetually off balance. . . . The narrator proves to be anything but reliable, and that's the creepy fun of The Job of the Wasp. . . . Winnette's book. . . . is its own unique, surreal thing, related in a distinctive voice, by turns funny and spooky.”

Los Angeles Review of Books

“Oscillating between murder mystery, psychological thriller, and coming-of-age novel, The Job of the Wasp is a careful, yet playful, study of the power plays inevitable among children, and between children and adults, by way of an exploration of group dynamics and science fiction. Winnette’s work capitalizes on the spectral aspect of being alive to discover a newfound meaning for self-actualization . . . Winnette effectively paints the picture of the preteen experience: an endless stream of attempts to fit into a group that innately wants to reject you and arbitrarily demean you. Interestingly, Winnette combines this trope with some critical theory. If the child is suddenly a threat to the others, and if no one believes a word he says or wants anything to do with him, then what does it mean for him to be the sole narrator of the story? . . . It’s the unheimlich, the uncanny nature of Winnette’s story that makes each narrative occurrence visceral and creepily familiar.”

So Far

“With Winnette’s fourth novel he proves he’s adept at re-appropriating genre conventions in intriguing ways.” ―The Millions, "Most Anticipated: The Great 2018 Book Preview""I’m a sucker for smart horror novels, in the same way that I’m a sucker for smart horror movies. They’re my popcorn, and I’ve heard this is a great one. The quiet of the nighttime desert around my yurt will turn any atmospheric spookiness up to 11." ―Adrienne Celt, Real Simple, 7 Authors on the Books They're Packing for Their Summer Vacations"It’s been a while since a book kept me captivated by gory mystery, anxiously awaiting the next turn of the page, as I was while reading Colin Winnette’s The Job of the Wasp. . . . Winnette pulls off suspense masterfully, keeping the reader constantly guessing, uncertain of the true nature of the mischief afoot. Every time I thought I knew 'whodunnit,' a new element was introduced, rendering my previous theories impossible, and setting me on a new route of grizzly discovery. Throughout the book, Winnette maintains a perfectly gothic atmosphere that is simply gorgeous. At times, I actually felt the proverbial 'chills down my spine' and had to put the book down, walk away and shake off that creepy old feeling." ―Full Stop"Winnette looked at haunted house stories, locked-room mysteries, Victorian boarding school stories, and unreliable narrator–helmed psychological thrillers and was like, I WANT ALL THE THINGS. And thus, The Job of the Wasp was born, featuring a couple of unreliable narrators, a deeply disturbing boarding school environment, dead bodies turning up where you least expect them, and, if all that wasn’t frightening enough, f*cking wasps." ―Tor.com, Reviewers' Choice: The Best Books of 2018

Tor.com

“This book works marvelously as a spooky horror before suddenly becoming a moving tale of alienation . . . Winnette’s writing is immaculate. From descriptions of corpses to the inner lives of wasps, I believed every word he gave me. And in our narrator, he’s created a singular voice: prissy, contemptuous, achingly lonely, and darkly funny . . . This isn’t just a ghost story or a locked room mystery―it’s much more an examination of how we define reality, he we interact with our deepest fears, and how we define our humanity. But the ghost stuff is also cool, and if you’re looking for a visceral horror experience, this book is a perfect fit for a stormy night’s reading.”

Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“The Job of the Wasp is what would happen if William Golding’s Lord of the Flies crashed against Guillermo del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone at high speed in a room full of pulp magazines where Kinji Fukasaku was trying to rewrite Battle Royale as a Gothic ghost story.”

The East Bay Review

“The Job of the Wasp reads fast and sometimes funny . . . Because even as Winnette unboxes the mystery, lays all his cards on the table, it is the small shift in the narrator’s mind set the reader is drawn towards . . . Winnette has done a fine job crafting his bizarre, haunting world.”

Kirkus Reviews

“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 . . . 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.”

Publishers Weekly

“[The novel is] 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.”

The Portland Mercury

“[A] gripping new novel . . . The Job of the Wasp reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s Dead Boy Detectives characters, introduced as neglected wards of their near-empty boarding school during the Sandman 'Seasons of Mists' arc . . . Winnette has a real gift for immersive voice.”

The Cut, 1 of 8 Books They're Reading in October

“Winnette's latest novel should be required reading for moody teenagers the world over: A coming-of-age tale replete with darkness and murder, The Job of the Wasp refuses to soften for the sake of its reader.”

Liberty Hardy, Book Riot's "All the Books!" podcast

“It's so good . . . I would describe this as if Kelly Link wrote Lord of the Flies. The writing is really fun and the tone is quiet light despite the fact that it's this weird, murder-y, gothic novel... I really, really enjoyed it.”

San Diego City Beat

“What use is there in talking about something in the language of what it is not?”) that tantalizes the reader and introduces uncertainty at every turn.”

The Fanzine

“ A writer whose work absconds tradition on a quest for making new myth. . . . The Job of the Wasp, then, showcases the fun of the murder mystery within the gothic tradition. This is not an old gothic text, where environmental fear makes us retreat further inside ourselves, no, this is a revitalized gothic, where fear is controlled by our institutions, forcing to us act out of turn. . . . Kudos to Winnette for spinning such a bone-chilling novel. We would be wise to question our own allegiances for once. The Job of the Wasp seems to ask from where do we take power, comfort―and how often at the expense of others."

Daniel Handler, author of We Are Pirates and All The Dirty Parts

“The Job of the Wasp is a madcap mystery, a macabre coming-of-age story and an unearthly fantasy―but it feels like childhood, like the world, like life.”

ThisIsHorror

“This time of the year is perfect for coming-of-age ghost stories, especially one that sounds as mysterious and intriguing as [The Job of the Wasp]... Winnette takes on the gothic ghost story, delivering ghastly chills with a literary flair.”

Tor.com, "The Books We're Looking Forward to in 2018"

“A fantastic-looking Gothic novel."

Patrick deWitt, author of Undermajordomo Minor and The Sisters Brothers

“The Job of the Wasp is wonderfully creepy and peculiar. a sort of gothic rendition of Lord of the Flies. Colin Winnette is an enviable, natural talent, and to read him is a pure entertainment.”

Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin

“Not only a page turner―and it is that―The Job of the Wasp is an unsettling whodunit like you have never read before. Terrifying and stylish, disconcerting and beautiful, it calls to mind Donna Tartt's The Secret History and the mysteries of Agatha Christie, though Winnette is his own echoing and eerie original voice. This is a perceptive, darkly funny novel that reminds us of how thrilling and bizarre it is to be alive.”

Patrick Hoffman, author of Every Man a Menace and The White Van

“I've never read anything like this book before. Colin Winnette's voice is utterly unique, his writing is delirious. This book is surreal, it's scary like a weird dream, and it is hilarious. He is a hugely talented writer.”

Jeff VanderMeer, author of BornePraise for Haints Stay

“The Job of the Wasp takes the best parts of some of the most delectable kinds of stories―the boarding school narrative, the locked-room murder mystery, the ghost story―and renders them wholly fresh. Colin Winnette is a writer both killingly funny and wise to the ways in which humor and absurdity contain untold sorrow. Even as The Job of the Wasp delights you with strangeness, with imagination, with intrigue, prepare also for devastation.” ―Alice Sola Kim, Whiting Award winner"The Job of the Wasp is a unique, deeply strange, and satisfying uncanny tale that surprises and at times shocks."

Kirkus Reviews

“Winnette portrays his serial killers with an odd grace and punctuates his circular narrative with murders, revenge killings, a shooting spree, and a heroic arc for wannabe gunslinger Bird that is broadly, darkly humorous.”

Los Angeles Times

“Winnette’s vision is darker, and his knack for tapping into scenes of primal fear and poetic violence serves as an indictment of our species’ base nature and worst instincts. Bloodshed begets bloodshed, but Haints Stay lingers on the trauma of the aftermath and explores the unintended consequences of violence.”

Publisher’s Weekly

“[Winnette] accentuates the grimness of this portrait of the frontier as a place where desperation and death were always near at hand.”

Electric Literature

“Dreamlike in its tone from the outset, Haints Stay becomes even more so as it reaches its conclusion: hidden identities are revealed; a sense of surrender pervades the novel as notions of identity slip away and blur. And the book’s final sentence shifts things from the Western realm to an even deeper strain of American literature, magnifying the subversion even more as it nods in the direction of an iconic final sentence.”

Lit Reactor

“One of the most wonderful things about Haints Stay is its black sense of humor. It’s subtle, dry, and slightly perverse, but it’s definitely there. It keeps the otherwise brutal reality of the character’s lives in check, because if there’s one thing the reader learns about Brooke and Sugar quite early on in the book, it’s this: don’t piss them off. These are men who are willing to slice guts and throats to avenge stolen blankets.”

but I like this more than McCarthy.”

“The cinematic quality to this work is undeniable and there’s a coolness that reminds me of Cormac McCarthy

Largehearted Boy [Haints Stay]

“Colin Winnette’s Haints Stay is a brutally dark and haunting novel of two killers, a noir Western that sits proudly among modern classics like Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers and Rudy Wurlitzer’s The Drop Edge of Yonder.

The Collagist

“is an intense, bloody, touching, and unexpectedly funny narrative that’s part road novel, part weird Western, and part coming of age/coming of gender story.”

Full Stop Praise for Coyote

“Haints Stay is dark, and bloody, and violent: raw and cutthroat and still capable of reducing you to helpless snickers.”

Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Like a modern-day Poe, [Winnette] has fashioned a narrator whose pull on the reader’s sympathy gradually fades as she recounts the aftermath of her daughter’s mysterious disappearance?.Winnette’s deeply affecting story is hard to put down and even harder to forget.”

Kirkus Reviews

“While there’s a contemporary urgency to Winnette’s novel, it’s the small details (and how they’re revealed) that give this story its considerable sting.”

?nameless characters whose stories feel more like refractions of something eternal than concrete events being narrated. The book is over in a heartbeat?

“Winnette’s work has the timeless quality of myth?

Steve Himmer, Necessary Fiction

“Winnette writes in that sort of effortless-yet-insightful style that makes other writers want to rewrite everything they’ve ever written; this together with his willingness to plumb the darkest depths of human emotion, for lack of a better word, stuns.”

Foreword Reviews

“Although it’s a slim book, Coyote is a perfect example of less being more. Winnette has created an experience in which the reader is led through the labyrinth of a disturbed woman’s mind, unforgettably.”

Ploughshares

“Sharp and delicate, this story is as fragmented as the narrator’s shattered frame of mind, all the more satisfying for its uncertainties.”

Aimee Bender, author of The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt, and Willful Creatures

“Coyote has a strong and inviting voice and that voice wraps around a dark story, a contemporary story, and one that has its own velocity and fragmentation built in. I found myself swept along in it and impacted by its delicate/bleak movement.”

which has nothing to do with wild dogs

“This spare, nerve-rattling tale

Heavy Feather Review Praise for Animal Collection

“Subtly vicious and slowly heartbreaking, Coyote by Colin Winnette is a splinter that strikes a major nerve making your whole body tremble.”

answers that I just don’t understand. Regardless, this is something with which I am gladly learning to live, and that Colin Winnette’s Animal Collection, which watches me from my living room coffee table, constantly reminds me.”

“Once again, I’m left with more questions than answers. Or, maybe, I do have the answers

Tin House

“[A]a totally quirky and wonderful book of fiction that runs a gamut of experiences all based (both literally and metaphorically) on the theme of animals.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On my first day, I was asked what I hoped to get out of my time at the facility and how I planned to make myself useful. The sign out front described the facility as a school for orphaned boys, so I said my hope was to get a good education, three square meals a day, a place to lay my head and, in return, I was happy to help out in any way I could. "This is not a school," said the Headmaster, whose nose was like a mushroom, somehow both silly and threatening, "it is a temporary holding facility with mandatory educational elements. You will be held until you are far enough along to care for yourself. No longer, no less. You will work, along with the other boys, to earn your room and board. You will be provided for, but you will not be comforted. Even if I wanted to comfort you, we have been forced by the economic realities of our situation to live simply. Add to that the fact that, by taking you on, we are now at a whopping thirty-one students, one beyond our maximum capacity as stated in the materials I've presented to the state every semester for over ten years running. And yet, here we are. Facing what will likely prove to be one of our most difficult terms, in all respects, I am sure of it. Run a facility as long as I have, and you start to develop a sense for these things." He pulled a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and tore it in half. "Regardless, we will clothe you, feed you, and provide you a bed. You'll receive a standard education. Nothing fancy. Enough to get by within these doors. But as far as things go out there," he pointed toward the heavy oaken doors that had been barred behind me when I walked in, "as far as that goes, you will be on your own." He pulled a pen from a jar at his right and set to drawing something on the bottom half of the torn paper. "You'll have various duties," he said. "You'll like some of them and you won't like others. You'll do all of them equally well, because if you stop, or start doing the job carelessly, we will find something else to do with you. And every time we have to reassign you, you will like your new job less. That I can promise you. So do your first job well and you will be as happy as you can possibly be. Do you understand everything I've told you so far?" "Yes," I told him. "Good," he said. He rose. "It's possible you'll like it here. It's also possible you'll hate it. We're not in the business of guarding memories, only keeping you from sliding into a lesser existence. You'll have everything you need and a few things more. You will get by. What do you say, will that suffice?" "Yes," I told him. "Have you always been so agreeable?" he said. "I'm sure I haven't," I said. "But I know when it's time to fight, and when it's time to say, 'Thank you,' and, 'I understand,' and 'Yes.'" He eyed me for a moment then waved me on. It was my belief that our first meeting went well. At dinner, we were served pork and spinach. It was simple but sat well together on the plate and had a pleasant smell. I nodded as another boy told me that the pork was so tender because the pigs were fattened on the flesh of new boys who could not fit in. His speech was practiced. He had heard it from someone before him, or he had given it many times. He was handsome, I decided. He had little else to say that wasn't about the book he was carrying with him. I hadn't read it, or any of the books he compared it to, because I have no taste for fiction, so I found it harder and harder to listen to him. "I'd like to focus on my tender pork, if you don't mind," I said. The boys around us flinched. They seemed to hiss through their teeth. "You should focus on having a shower," said the bookish boy. I was in damp and muddy clothes, it was true. I'd been instructed to report directly to the dining hall, where dinner was being served, and so hadn't been able to tidy up or bathe. The Headmaster had sat me with six boys he did not introduce, and now it was clear that those six boys were already preparing to turn on me. "Did you know," I told the boy, "that we are now one person beyond capacity? The Headmaster instructed me to report back if I had any thoughts on who we might be able to send packing. Anyone who might fare better on the streets than in a civilized facility. There are only so many beds, and there is only so much you can teach a person." "You are a liar," said the other boy, "and a faggot." I accepted what he had to say, and he added nothing more. We were not given salt. Only a fork and a napkin. When I was given the fork and the napkin I was instructed not to lose them. The napkin, I was told, was to keep my uniform clean of pork and spinach, once it had arrived. Outside of their providing the napkin, any spills or stains were mine to deal with, and stained uniforms were unacceptable. My measurements would be taken in the morning and I would receive a uniform within a week. Most of the other boys did look sharp. So I was looking forward to the uniform, and to blending in. After dinner, we were given half an hour of recess. A rectangle of yard ran the length of the dorms, edged by saplings on the opposite side. At its far end, there was a faded blue gazebo. Opposite that, an aging wooden frame draped in ivy or something like ivy, arching the reaching plant over a brick path that led back to the dining hall. The ivy held small buds that would blossom in the spring, I guessed. I didn't know much about plants, their names or behaviors, but I still enjoyed them. The sight of them and their smells, on occasion. I inspected the ivy and its buds while the other boys played a running game. Something put a boy on the sidelines and something else would draw him back in. I was unfamiliar with the rules and was not invited to play, but I did not feel excluded. The game had fallen habitually into place, as a matter of course, and I wasn't yet part of their world. After recess, we were instructed to study in our rooms. Mine was small but comfortable. There was a window, a dresser, and a desk. A small bed. A lamp with a green glass shade. I felt like a young professional. A young man setting out to make something of himself in the world. I felt suddenly heartened and hopeful. There was a stack of paper in the desk drawer, along with two pencils. I'd been given nothing to study yet, so I drew pictures. Everything that came to me was violent or bloody. I drew ghosts and soldiers and some things I did not know. I tore up the pages when I was done and set them in waste bin by the bed. Before lights out, the boys all stood in the hall and sang a song together. I did not know the words. Those I could decipher had little meaning to me. The sound filled the space like several bells, endlessly ringing. It was a song about loyalty and pride. I thought about it and realized that, at that point in my life, I was loyal to nothing and felt little pride. I did not sleep well that first night. The room felt like a grave. I heard laughter from outside the window, but only for a moment. I looked and saw nothing out of the ordinary. For the rest of the night, I was up, waiting for it to happen again. In the morning, I was called to the Headmaster's office. A small man in suspenders and a striped white shirt was there, and I was made to stand on a stool. He brought up my arms and spread my legs. He gripped each and every part of me, grumbling to himself. The Headmaster was at his desk, drawing on two halves of a torn sheet of paper. When he was finished, he placed one half in a drawer by his right knee and crumbled the other half in his left hand. He held the crumpled paper in a fist, which he gently pulsed as he watched the small man grip me. "You're fatter than boys your height should be," said the small man. "I'm sorry," I said. "I thought you were an orphan," he said. He stepped away from me, watched my feet, then stepped back in to grip some more. "Do you have what you need?" said the Headmaster. "The pants will have to be large in the waist, so they will look baggy around the legs," said the small man. "There's nothing I can do about it. I have too much to do to take on customized work for every fattened orphan sent your way." "I don't mind if they're baggy around the legs," I said. "Depending on how baggy they are," said the Headmaster, "it will be fine." "I don't know how baggy they will be just yet," said the small man. He had drawn a notepad from his back pocket and he was sketching something. "I don't mind if they're baggy," I said again. I brought down my arms. The small man stepped forward and raised the arms once more. I apologized. "If they're too baggy," said the Headmaster, still pulsing the crumpled paper, "we will send them back." "You have to understand that they are going to be baggy," said the small man, lowering his notepad. "If you don't understand that then there's going to be trouble." "It's okay," I said. "I understand that the pants will be somewhat baggy," said the Headmaster, "but if they are excessively baggy, we are going to send them back." "You're not getting it," said the small man. "The boy is fat. He needs a special waist. It's a grown man's waist. He does not have the legs of a grown man. The pants are going to be baggy, and they will be too long. I've never seen an orphan so well fed." "Send the pants," said the Headmaster. "Send pants that he can wear." The small man left in a huff, leaving the door ajar. "He's a pervert," said the Headmaster. "It's hard enough to find anyone who will accept what we have left to pay for uniforms, let alone a sane man with decent intentions. But your time together is through. Don't pay him any mind at all."

About the Author

Colin Winnette is the author of Haints Stay (Two Dollar Radio, 2015), Coyote (Les Figues Press, 2015), Fondly (Atticus Books, 2013) Animal Collection (Spork Press, 2012), and Revelation (Mutable Sound Press, 2011). His books have been translated into French and Italian, and his writing has appeared in Playboy, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Believer, Lucky Peach, and numerous other journals and anthologies. He lives in San Francisco.

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