Havoc by Rebecca Wait

 

Havoc by Rebecca Wait.

Published 3rd July 2025 from riverrun.

From the cover of the book:

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.

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1984. Desperate to get away from her tainted family, Ida Campbell manages to get herself a scholarship place at St Anne's, an obscure girls' boarding school high on cliffs overlooking the English Channel. Somewhat surprised when she actually turns up at the failing establishment, the eccentric, nuclear-war-obsessed Headmistress decides to place Ida in the only space available... with the infamous Louise Adler, whose prodigious reputation for mayhem and anarchy makes her a challenging prospect as a room mate.  

Meanwhile, geography teacher Eleanor Alston is facing another tedious year teaching girls who have little thirst for learning. Haunted by her only love affair that went badly wrong, and mulling over a less than shining career that has died in the shabby halls of St Anne's, she sees little to look forward to. However, the arrival of a new male teacher, Matthew Langfield, soon gives her a distraction from her own problems. Setting tongues wagging amongst the girls, and female staff, Eleanor is certain there is something not quite right about the story he has told them about his past...

Set against a fabulously imagined, cliff-top girls' boarding school setting, which channels Malory Towers by way of a decidedly dark version of St Trinian's, Rebecca Wait hits her literary stride once again with the compelling Havoc.

Told in three strands, the story follows the equally bizarre perspectives of sixth-former Ida, from the pupil side; and teacher Eleanor, viewing events from the staff side; plus the letters of neurologist James Halliwell to a former colleague, which become more significant as the story progresses. Without giving too much away, Wait spins a mesmerising tale about Ida's quest to fit in at a place where she hopes to be free of her past; Elizabeth's search for purpose as she tries to get to the truth about enigmatic Matthew; and the piece de resistance of the whole novel, which concerns a strange malady that begins to afflict the pupils.

Hysteria is the name of the game, as the three strands twist sinuously around each other, and Wait fills them out with a delicious dark vein of humour that plays beautifully against the minutiae of school life, the odd-ball collection of staff members, and the cracking dynamic between Ida and Louise (what a pair, I loved them both, and the way their relationship developed). The mystery of the disturbing ailment provides a heavy-weight puzzle to be solved (and plenty of emotional heft too), with a minor strain in the thread about what Ida is running from. 

Wait sports wonderfully with popular culture and political references appropriate to the era, particularly with the fear about nuclear war that nibbled at the public conscience in the mid 1980's (that 1984 Threads drama still haunts me), the Brighton bombings, and Louise's perturbing selection of reading material.

I knew I was going to love this one before I even opened the cover, and I was right. Absolutely fabulous from start to finish!

Havoc is available to buy now in hardcover, ebook, and audio formats.

Thank you to riverrun for sending me a proof of this book in return for an honest review.

About the author:

Rebecca Wait is the author of four novels, the most recent of which, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, was a book of the year for The Times, Guardian, Express, Good Housekeeping and BBC Culture, and was shortlisted for the Nota Bene Prize.

Her previous novel, Our Fathers, received widespread acclaim and was a Guardian book of the year and a thriller of the month for Waterstones.