The View on the Way Down

Literature & Fiction

Wait, Rebecca

Contemporary

Picador

Literary

Our Fathers

riverrun

What kind of man kills his own family?\nA gripping, tender novel about fathers and sons from the highly acclaimed author 
A Guardian crime and thriller book of the year 2020\n'This is a beautifully realised novel, touching on the fallibility of memory and the unknowability of families, and gripping in its intensity. Outstanding' Mail on Sunday 
'A spectacular novel' Spectator\nWhen Tom was eight years old, his father took a shotgun and shot his family: his wife, his son and baby daughter, before turning the gun on himself. Only Tom survived.\nHe left his tiny, shocked community on the island of Litta and the strained silence of his Uncle Malcolm's house while still a young boy. For twenty years he's tried to escape his past. Until now.\nWithout knowing how to ask, he needs answers - from his uncle, who should have known. From his neighbours, who think his father a decent man who 'just snapped'. From the memories that haunt the wild landscape of the Hebrides.\nAnd from the silent ones who know more about what happened - and why - than they have ever dared admit.\nBy turns gripping, beautiful, devastating and tender, Our Fathers is a story about violence and redemption, control and love. With understated compassion and humour, Rebecca Wait gives a voice to the silenced and to the silences between men of few words.

Our Fathers: A gripping, tender novel about fathers and sons from the highly acclaimed author

“A profoundly unsettling, brilliantly executed, and deeply humane depiction of a slow slide toward an unspeakable act . . . A remarkable novel” (Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven). Judith has been visiting her mother, Stephanie, in prison once a month for the last eight years. She still can’t bring herself to talk with her mother about what brought them here―or about Nathaniel, the man whose religious cult almost cost them their lives. When Stephanie first meets him, she is a struggling single mother and Nathaniel is a charismatic outsider, unlike anyone she’s ever known. In deciding to join the group he’s founded, Stephanie thinks she’s doing the best thing for her daughter: a new home, a new purpose. Judith and Stephanie are initiated into a secret society whose “followers” must obey the will of a zealous prophet. As Stephanie immerses herself in her new life, Judith slowly realizes the moral implications of the strict lifestyle Nathaniel preaches. Tensions deepen, faith and doubt collide, and a horrifying act of violence changes everything. In the shattering aftermath, it seems that no one is safe. With “propulsive plotting” (The Guardian), The Followers is a novel about love, hope, and identity that asks: are we still responsible for our actions if we remake ourselves in someone else’s image? And can there be a way back? “With skillful judgment, Wait shows us that not everyone can be trained or scared into submission. The tenderness and the transformative nature of the ending are truly moving.”―The Independent “Brooding tension . . . building to a page-turning finish.”―Daily Mail

The Followers

Europa Editions

Nobody knows why John Baird, a quiet family man, decided one day to pick up a shotgun and murder his wife and children. On the remote Scottish island of Skellag, violent crime is unheard of, and the killings sent shockwaves through this tiny community in which the Bairds were well-known and liked. 
Tommy, the only survivor of the terrible crime, has returned to Skellag many years later. Faced with this reminder of the horrors that took place amongst them, the community must ask themselves again how much responsibility we have to know our neighbors. What drives a man to murder his own family? And to what extent is Tommy his father’s son? 
With unflinching candor and powerful prose, Rebecca Wait interrogates the damaging legacy of toxic masculinity for a family and a community. Brave and urgent, Our Fathers shows how deeply family can wound and how it can offer our greatest solace.

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Books by Wait, Rebecca