The Followers

By Rebecca Wait

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

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: May 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781447224761

Rebecca Wait

Rebecca Wait has been writing for as long as she can remember and has won numerous prizes for short stories and plays. She wrote The View on the Way Down in the evenings whilst working as a teaching assistant. Rebecca lives in London. You can find her online at: rebeccawait.com and twitter.com/rebeccawait.

Reviews for The Followers

[thelibraryladies · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’ve been deeply interested in cults since I was in California during the Heaven’s Gate mass suicide. I remember seeing footage of the crime scene on the television, and being completely horrified and yet taken with the idea that this group believed that a spaceship was on the tail of Hale-Bopp comet. Ever since then, I’ve had a twisted interest in books about cults, be they true stories or not, and the way that people can fall into them. So when I stumbled upon a New York Times article about “The Followers” by Rebecca Wait, I requested it, thinking that it was going to be a thrilling yarn about a scary cult wreaking havoc. While I sat on the couch reading it (making a lot of scandalized noises that my husband kept enquiring about, until the fifth time and he just stopped asking), I was totally engrossed. This was everything I wanted it to be, but it was a bit more than I bargained for as well. After all, at the heart of this is the story of a woman who takes her daughter and whisks them both away at the whims of a religious fanatic who has completely cast her under his spell. So, you know. Fun times.The thing that stuck me most was that it shifted between various levels of believer/non believer. First we have Stephanie, the single mother who falls in love with “The Prophet” Nathanial. She feels so doted on and loved by Nathanial when they first start dating, and she feels so trapped in her life as a single working mother, that his affection is enough to make her pick up her entire life and follow him anywhere. As I read it was clear that Nathanial was big trouble, but I could also completely understand why Stephanie wanted to go with him, even if I was cursing her and the terrible decisions she was making. Then there is the perspective of Stephanie’s daughter Judith, whose adolescent rebellion is only kicked up a few notches when they move to the commune. She’s a strong willed girl who may have treaded towards unbelievable in her mental strength, but she felt so real and so well realized that I didn’t even care. Then you have Moses, the only friend that Judith makes at the commune, who was born into it and fully believes that not only is Nathanial the Prophet and the ourside world the road to hell, but that his birthmark on his face is a mark of the devil. At first I was very worried about him and his intentions towards Judith, but he really is just the epitome of naive wonderment, raised in a warped society that is all he’s known. And finally you have Thomas, a long time member of Nathanial’s thrall, but who has started questioning it. With these different characters on different parts of the belief scale, Rachel Wait has done a great job of showing the full gamut of emotions for the members.I loved the description of the commune, which is located in the Moors of England. The isolation was palpable, both physically (with the description of few buildings and many bogs, forests, and other barriers) and emotionally. The members are told that if they leave they can never come back, and will be doomed to stay in “Gehenna” and probably rot with all the nonbelievers when the end of days comes. The manipulation that Nathanial administered to his disciples was also incredibly creepy, through kind syrupy promises and yet no physical action of his own to place his controls upon them. I think that Wait hit the nail on the head with Nathanial, and he was the perfect villain, just as Stephanie, Moses, and the other members were perfect victims. And yet this was told in such a way that it always felt a couple steps up from your run of the mill thriller. We also got to see beyond the cult moments, and where Judith and Stephanie ended up after all was said and done. Spoiler alert, it’s pretty bleak. But along with the overarching bleakness, there was also a fair amount of purity and hope, specifically through the friendship between Judith and Moses. They are both outcasts in their own ways in the commune, and while he’s a true believer and she’s a non believer, they forge a bond that was absolutely sweet and powerful. They really do bring out the best in each other, and their types of belief and non belief feel more constructive than those of Stephanie and Thomas. Every time they were together, my heart would grow ten sizes bigger.And yes, the slow build up of terror as the cult starts to fall apart was absolutely riveting. I love a good slow burn build up, and “The Followers” really nails the ‘frog in a pot of boiling water’ pace.All in all, “The Followers” was an entertaining and insightful story that exceeded my expectations. If a good and twisty cult story is your idea of a good time, definitely pick this one up. You’ll get a bit more than you bargained for in the best way possible.

[nickelini · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Definitely one of the better books I've read this year. Finally, a compelling read. Always happy to pick this one up.Stephanie is struggling as a single mother living in Northern England with her 12 year old daughter Judith, when she meets the handsome and charismatic Nathaniel. She thinks she falls in love, and then yada yada yada, she's moved to his remote compound in the Yorkshire moors and has joined his small religious cult. Things quickly go bad, which we knew from time jumps into the future when Judith visits her mom in prison. We know something bad has happened, but not what or who it involves.The book isn't perfect, but overall it was a great read. I think it would have been stronger had the author picked just one of two characters to follow, instead of at least five, and also if she'd decide whether Judith or Stephanie was the main character. I also think she needed a bit more about how Stephanie slipped so quickly into her new role in an extremest cult and how Nathaniel brain washed her. But this shouldn't stop anyone from reading this.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Stephanie is a single mother, a waitress barely getting by and when the charismatic Nathaniel begins paying attention to her, she's more than willing to move with her daughter Judith to his remote compound and learn to adapt to the religious strictures of his small sect of Christian believers. Judith, on the other hand, longs to return to her friends and is deeply skeptical of the sect's teachings. Small and isolated, Nathaniel's followers are thrown off-kilter by the two new members and things rapidly become unbalanced and then dangerous.I picked up Rebecca Wait's novel on a whim and for once it worked out for me. Wait has written a book in which the dynamics of a religious cult feel real and plausible. The reader knows from the outset that things go badly wrong, and the finding out of how and why that happens makes for compelling reading. Judith is a wonderful character; as a child she is simultaneously opinionated and uncertain, she just knows that she doesn't want to stay up on the moors. As an adult, she's stuck with what her past has done to her, and with her conflicted feelings. The look at both what draws a person into a religious group like this one, as well as the dynamics of a small, close-knit community are fascinating.

[nicx27 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really loved The View on the Way Down so was very keen to get hold of Rebecca Wait's latest book, The Followers, and I enjoyed it very much, although I think it lacked the emotion of the former. In The Followers, Judith is a 12 year old girl who lives with her mother, Stephanie. When Stephanie gets pulled into a cult run by Prophet Nathaniel, Judith obviously goes with her but she is deeply mistrustful of the set up. Her only friend is another 12 year old called Moses, who has never left The Ark, which is the name given for the place where they all live. The whole story leads up to a terrible event for which we know from the very beginning of the book has ended up with Stephanie being in prison.Rebecca Wait is an excellent writer. This book kept my interest all the way through and features an interesting and uncommon storyline. I really liked Judith who was a very plucky character. It's interesting to think about why people end up in cults and what is so special about the person that leads them. The story is a little on the disturbing side at times and I felt myself feeling anxious at the way things were going which is a mark of the quality of the writing.I can't wait for Wait's next book, I think I will like it!