JENNIFER YIN
Colin Winnette’s new novel The Job of the Wasp opens with a stark, Dickensian scene: An unnamed boy narrator interviews with a stern but self-interested orphanage Headmaster. “This is not a school,” the Headmaster says, laying down the strict guidelines of the boy’s new home. “It is a temporary holding facility with mandatory educational elements.”
“It was my belief that our first meeting went well,” the boy remarks at the exchange’s conclusion, as though we had not also just witnessed the whole ominous thing. Thus begins our series of disagreements with the narrator, a theme that continues throughout Winnette’s gripping new novel.
