Synopsis
From the acclaimed author of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way, Rebecca Wait's The Followers is a tense and shocking novel about family ties and how much we can outrun our past.
'A great surging shout of a novel' – Guardian
'Profoundly unsettling, brilliantly executed' - 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. But neither of them can bring themselves to talk about what brought them here - or about Nathaniel.
When Stephanie first meets him, she is a struggling single mother and Nathaniel is a charismatic outsider, unlike anyone she's ever known. When she decides to join the small religious cult he has founded high on the moors, Stephanie thinks she is doing the best for her daughter: a new home, a new life, a new purpose. As Stephanie slowly surrenders herself to Nathaniel's will, tensions deepen, faith and doubt collide, and a horrifying act of violence changes everything.
'A page-turning finish' – Daily Mail
'Such a suspenseful and compassionate book . . . I thought it remarkable.' – Sunjeev Sahota, author of Ours Are The Streets
Details
Reviews
“A restrained tour-de-force, a profoundly unsettling, brilliantly executed, and deeply humane depiction of a slow slide toward an unspeakable act, and the difficulty and necessity of finding a way to live in the aftermath. The Followers is a remarkable novel.”Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven
“Such a suspenseful and compassionate book, never more so than in its feeling for certain characters, the disorderliness of their inner lives, their vulnerability. I thought it remarkable”Sunjeev Sahota, author of OURS ARE THE STREETS
“I really enjoyed this quietly terrifying and suspenseful exploration of obedience to authority and the dangers of fundamentalism”Carys Bray, author of A SONG FOR ISSY BRADLEY
“Rebecca Wait describes the world of The Followers with such vividness that I dreamt about her cold, misty moorland, and with such tenderness that the ending brought tears to my eyes”Alison Moore, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author of THE LIGHTHOUSE
