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Our Fathers (Paperback)
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Our Fathers (Paperback)

Our Fathers (Paperback)

(author)
£10.99
Paperback 384 Pages
Published: 28/01/2021
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Waterstones Says

At once a gripping thriller and an insightful study of a family tragedy in a tight-lipped community, Our Fathers sees a young man return to solve the terrible events of his past in the untamed landscape of the Hebrides.

Waterstones Thriller of the Month for February 2021

When 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.

He 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.

Without 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.

And from the silent ones who know more about what happened - and why - than they have ever dared admit.

By 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.

Publisher: Quercus Publishing
ISBN: 9781529400069
Number of pages: 384
Weight: 250 g
Dimensions: 198 x 128 x 26 mm


MEDIA REVIEWS

'With an immaculate sense of place and great compassion, Rebecca Wait reaches behind the headlines to tell a story of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Stark yet lyrical, subtly mysterious and always humane, Our Fathers is a novel that details the trauma that is left behind in the long, bleak aftermath of violence' - Nina Allan, author of The Dollmaker

Rebecca Wait accomplishes something truly rare: a novel that exerts an extraordinary grip without appearing to apply much force. She is adept at peeling away enough of her characters' inner lives to help us to understand their hurt and their dilemmas, but without ever making them into emotional freak shows. - Irish Examiner

A wonderful novel - Spectator

Perceptive, generous exploration of ... trauma - Literary Review

Beautifully spare and profoundly upsetting... an absolutely captivating book - The Tablet

An astonishingly powerful story of toxic masculinity, regret and the possibility of redemption. - Guardian

A deeply involving study of a controlling father and the devastation he wreaks. Wait evokes the isolated community where the violence unfolds with startling realism and compassion. A wise and moving novel. - Polly Clark

This is a beautifully realised novel, touching on the fallibility of memory and the unknowability of families, and gripping in its intensity. Outstanding. - The Mail on Sunday

Rebecca Wait is a master pageturner - Buchkultur

Rebecca Wait moves between psychological novel, family novel and crime thriller. And remains as effectively sparse as the landscape of the Hebrides itself. Everything only rock and heath, moor and sea, in between fate, human - Berliner Zeitung

Our Fathers is a compelling and insightful exploration of the way the effects of an atrocity ripple out to affect an entire community. Wait has the gift of finding the universal truths in extreme events and making them live on the page. Precise, restrained and disarmingly funny, this novel beguiles, shocks and charms.

In clear and tight writing, this is the riveting story of a few moments of violence and the decades of impact that follows. The novels makes very human what would otherwise be a headline. This is a writer to watch.

Gripping - The Irish Times, The Gloss

Wait ... offers a thoughtful and wrenching portrait of a small Scottish town wracked by guilt over an incident of domestic violence. ... Fans of Patrick McCabe and Jon McGregor will appreciate Wait's melancholic snapshot - Publishers Weekly

Memory, masculinity, and survivor's guilt are picked apart as the novel treads its path, dodging sensationalism and easy resolutions while evoking haunted, inarticulate people in a relentless landscape. A piercing, vivid, and humane story. - Kirkus Reviews

Wait has written a novel that is powerful and insightful. Deeply compassionate and even its hardest to look at moments are aware, sensitive and humane. - New Books Magazine

Waits' stark prose traces a grim but compassionate story, an unsettling exploration of masculinity and domestic violence which is nevertheless compelling, haunting and hard to put down. - Glasgow Herald

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“Chilling complex tale”

Set in the Scottish islands this is a heartbreaking but credible story with a twist in the tale. Very well written with intelligent plotting. Well worth a read.

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 30

“A gripping, poignant novel”

I LOVED this book. You might expect a novel about a man returning after twenty years to the Scottish island where his mother and siblings were murdered by his father to be unrelentingly bleak; however, although bleak... More

Hardback edition
Helpful? Upvote 27

“I must check out her other books - superb read!”

Thank you to the publishers for this review copy, I've never read Rebecca Wait books before so whilst I had heard great things about it, I had no real expectation myself.
This is an absolute superb read which has... More

Paperback edition
Helpful? Upvote 25

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