The Followers
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By Rebecca Wait
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1 review
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
Reviews
A very vivid portrayal of life within a cult. In this case Stephanie is the targeted victim, living a somewhat unfulfilled life with her daughter Judith in “Gehenna”, the outside world. She is pursued relentlessly by the cult leader, a charismatic individual with a lust for both power and control. She falls for his manipulation hook, line and sinker and joins a small community of other “followers” who are equally under his spell. The climax is nothing short of cataclysmic.
The book comes across as being completely plausible which only serves to make it more frightening. Once upon a time these were all “ordinary” people. It is both a powerful and an unsettling novel, with an underlying sense of foreboding throughout. It is also an extremely good read and I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone.
