havoc
‘A total blast of a read’
Press Association
‘[Wait] perfectly balances dark humour with a sense of encroaching threat. Her keen ear for dialogue and astute social observations make for a highly enjoyable and multi-layered novel.’
Observer
‘Rebecca Wait has a glorious turn of phrase and a dazzling ability to go on peculiar tangents that never detract, but only ever add to a character's experience.’
Herald
‘A master of zippy one-liners’
Sunday Times
‘A biting and savagely funny novel . . . Think dark academia meets The League of Gentlemen.’
Red Magazine
‘Gleefully macabre . . . Wait mines the rich seam of girls' school fiction to delirious and rewarding effect. . . Yet beneath the comedy lies a distinctly unsettling undertone: the girls experience a convincingly visceral terror that edges towards Shirley Jackson territory . . . Combined with excellent pacing, a plot so deliciously thick you could stand a spoon up in it, and the boldness required to splice a darker thread into the narrative, it all adds up to a thoroughly satisfying contribution to a happily capacious genre.’
Guardian (Book of the Day)
A blistering tragicomedy from the author of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way
Fleeing Scotland in the wake of family disgrace, 16-year-old Ida Campbell secures a scholarship at a failing girls' boarding school on a remote part of the south English coast. Despite the eccentricities of her new Headmistress, who warns her of the dangers of the Cold War and the ever-present threat of the bomb, St Anne's seems like a refuge to Ida. But all this is about to change. For a start, her new room-mate is the infamous Louise Adler, potential arsonist and hardened outcast.
Meanwhile, the geography teacher Eleanor Alston, in her late thirties, a disastrous love affair in her wake, faces the new term with weary resignation. But the fragile ecosystem of the school is disrupted by the arrival of a new teacher, Matthew Langfield. Eleanor has an uneasy feeling he is not who he says he is.
And things only get worse when a mysterious sickness starts to spread throughout the school, causing strange limb jerks and seizures among the pupils. What is happening to the girls of St Anne's? Could there be a poisoner among them? Is Ida's scholarship really an escape, or is it instead a new nightmare?