“Wasp Box is full of wonders, by which I mean it’s full of drunken fathers and the Finger Lakes of New York and middling wineries and too-smart-and-nosy-for-their-own-good kids and bomb shelters and young love and lost love and lost diaries and killer wasps. In this, his unbelievably smart, tense, breakneck first novel, Ockert has made something strange, and great, a book that is absolutely impossible to put down once you’ve started it.”—BROCK CLARKE, author of Exley
“With sentences as darting and sharp as the wasps that haunt this remarkable debut novel, Jason Ockert has crafted an unforgettable vision of an America—and a family—in peril.”—LAURA VAN DEN BERG, author of The Isle of Youth
“Wasp Box may cause swelling, itching, anaphylactic shock, renal failure, barbed terror, stinging empathy, and profound joy.”—BENJAMIN PERCY, author of Red Moon
When a soldier returning home to a small New York town inadvertently transports an invasive species of deadly parasitic wasps, he sets off a frightening chain of events that throws an entire community into an unpredictable crisis. Escalating in its psychological, emotional, and narrative intensity, Ockert’s gripping first novel examines the choices individuals make in the face of danger, the limits of personal strength, and the value of family loyalty when the familiar world unravels.
Praise for Ockert’s previous work:
“Ockert’s voice is quirky, funny, and totally original—it conveys, in these dreamlike, virtuosic stories, a strange and vulnerable kindness you haven’t read before.”—George Saunders, author of Tenth of December
“Beautiful stories, searching and generous. Ockert never ceases to astound.”—Junot Díaz, author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
“Ockert’s plots are hair-raisingly original, his humor is feverish and dark, his language soars. And yet no matter what altitude of weird Ockert achieves here, his imaginary worlds are always populated by real people, characters who matter deeply to each other, and to their readers.”—Karen Russell, author of Swamplandia!
At 179 tight pages, Wasp Box is an argument for the short novel in the vein of The Burning House by Paul Lisicky and A Good Day to Die by Jim Harrison. There’s not an ounce of bloat in this book. Ockert’s masterful usage of first person contributes to the story’s immediacy. Ockert suggests that the wasps’ agitation merely elevate the swarm that resides within all of us. By exercising control over his prose and his content — by making the focus of the book how Hudson’s search for independence pushes against his father’s desire to strengthen their relationship — Ockert manages to tell a narrow tale that pulses wide.’ — The Millions
Wasp Box is a thrilling debut that will no doubt soon garner lots of positive attention from readers and critics alike. It is that rare novel that manages to be profound while also being profoundly entertaining.’ – Wraparound South
Jason Ockert's first novel is strangely magnificent. Deep down, Wasp Box is a love story: A soldier searches for a way to come home to his sweetheart, a man attempts to be a better father to his son, a quiet boy and an odd girl find companionship in each other and an old man struggles to cope without his deceased wife. But it's also a story filled with a quiet, lurking dread. It touches on the fear that lives inside all of us, a fear that literally surfaces when a soldier returned from war births a swarm of parasitic wasps that have been nesting in his brain, feeding on his insides. Are you cringing yet? Good. Those are just the first two pages.’ –Bookslut
The novel is at once a profound commentary on the human condition in America at the moment and a bona fide case of the heebie-jeebies between covers.’ — Fiction Writers Review
What develops in Wasp Box is horrific, beautiful, bizarre, poignant and mesmerizing. The sensory and visceral detail will cause readers to claw at their legs and necks, jam fingers into their ears, or hop on one foot to shake from the head what may lurk inside. Wasp Box portrays families at their best and worst, strongest and weakest, closest and most distant. Above all, it offers a portrait of the resilience and reliance necessary to survive.’ – The Rumpus
JASON OCKERT is the author of two story collections, Neighbors of Nothing and Rabbit Punches, and his short fiction has appeared in Best American Mystery Stories, Oxford American, and McSweeney’s, among other publications. He teaches creative writing at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina
