Our Fathers - by Rebecca Wait (Paperback)

About the Book

"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?"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Praise for Our Fathers

"A piercing, vivid, and humane story depicting the long aftermath of extreme domestic violence." --Kirkus Reviews

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

"Thoughtful and wrenching." --Publishers Weekly

Praise for Rebecca Wait's The Followers

"A restrained tour-de-force, profoundly unsettling, brilliantly executed, and deeply humane." --EMILY ST. JOHN MANDEL, author of Station Eleven

"Smooth and magnetic . . . The translucent simplicity of Wait's prose lends a crystalline quality to the scenes, whether humdrum, horrific or, ultimately, healing." --Kirkus Reviews

"This novel lingers with you, and for those who have suffered similar things, it echoes truth." --Matt Haig, The Guardian

"The tenderness and the transformative nature of the ending are truly moving." --The Independent

"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

"The novel has a brooding tension that threatens no good to come, building to a page-turning finish." --John Harding, author of Florence & Giles

About the Author

Rebecca Wait grew up in the Oxfordshire countryside and read English at Oxford University. She is the author of prize-winning short stories and plays, as well as critically acclaimed novels The View on the Way Down (2013) and The Followers (2017). She writes and teaches in London.