Our Fathers
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4.0 • 3 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
Set on a remote Scottish island, this "piercing, vivid, and humane story depict[s] the long aftermath of extreme domestic violence" (Kirkus Reviews).
Nobody knows why John Baird, a quiet family man, took it into his head one day to pick up a shotgun and murder his wife and children. On the Scottish island of Litta, violent crime is unheard of, and the killings send shockwaves through this tiny community in which the Bairds were well-known and liked.
Tommy, the only survivor of the terrible crime, has come back to Litta many years later. Faced with this reminder of the horrors that took place amongst them, the community must ask themselves again if anyone can truly know their 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, Our Fathers interrogates the damaging legacy of toxic masculinity, and reveals how family can both wound us and help us heal.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wait (The Followers) offers a thoughtful and wrenching portrait of a small Scottish town wracked by guilt over an incident of domestic violence. At 31, Tommy Baird returns to the Scottish island of Skellag after years of absence, following the murder-suicide of his mother, Katrina, and his two siblings by his father in 1994 when Tommy was a young boy; he survived by hiding in a wardrobe. Tommy stays with his uncle, Malcolm, despite Malcolm's reservations due to Tommy's violent tendencies as a pugnacious adolescent. Wait adroitly maps the craggy psychological terrain beneath Tommy and Malcolm's loaded silences, using Malcolm's difficulty in making conversation as a means to explore the shame of inaction as his brother abused Tommy's family for years. Malcolm's thoughts are mirrored by the reaction of Fiona, a town busybody who grapples with regrets for not helping when Katrina asked for aid to escape her husband. Wait builds tension through cyclical repetition of the characters' ruminations as they try to undo the past while revealing more of their own part in what happened. Fans of Patrick McCabe and Jon McGregor will appreciate Wait's melancholic snapshot.
