Review: 'Havoc' by Rebecca Wait

Ida finds herself at a remote boarding school that is decidedly odd. Why she's there is something of a mystery, as is the reason behind weird spasm shown by various girls. Something is up at this school and through perspectives from the girls and faculty, Havoc slowly reveals a fascinating story. Thanks to riverrun and NetGalley for providing me with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Pub. Date: 3/7/2025
Publisher: Quercus Books; riverrun

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?

Our grip on reality is more fragile than we'd like to accept. When I went through a phase of reading a lot about schizophrenia, I came to appreciate how tenuous our understanding of the world and ourselves is. We don't necessarily understand the brain and all its capable of that well, nor necessarily how it affects our bodies and our perception. Usually, we don't have to think about this too much nor worry too much about whether anything might set us off. But if your right arm were to suddenly start twitching and spasming, that would be concerning, wouldn't it. Especially if the person sitting next to you is developing the same symptom. Are you both being poisoned, perhaps? Are you going mad? Narratives around what is usually considered mass hysteria, or mass psychogenic illness, can sometimes fall on the wrong side of a blurry line, where they go for easy answers. In Havoc, Rebecca Wait takes a situation ripe for exploitation, a messy girls' boarding school, and turns it into a story that shows not just gentleness towards its characters but also a desire to understand what is behind events such as psychogenic illness or conversion disorder.

Ida arrives at St. Anne's not so much because she really wants to be there, but because she no longer wants to be at home. We're not immediately told why, but as we get to see St. Anne's through her eyes it becomes very clear that this school is odd, extremely so. Are there ghost? Do some of the buildings seem to trap its inhabitants? Did Ida's roommate throw a previously roommate out of a window? And are the nuclear fire drills really necessary? All of that is strange enough, but when one student begins to develop odd spasms, which then spread to her classmates, everything becomes decidedly weirder. Havoc is told largely through Ida's perspective, but it is enriched with chapters from Eleanor's perspective, a teacher at the school, and letters from a local medical resident to his former colleague, trying to figure out what is happening at the school. Out of these three stories, Wait braids together a narrative about belonging, love, isolation, and both the strength and fragility of our minds. I think I enjoyed Ida's storyline the most, because of the development we see in her and the way Wait continued to surprise me with her. The doctor's storyline however, entirely told through letters, was also really touching.

One thing I really enjoyed about Havoc was how Rebecca Wait captured the insanity that is being a teenage girl surrounded by other teenage girls. I went to a mixed high school, but nonetheless got some experience of the intensity of that time. It is not all bad though. Within that intensity, deep bonds can develop and you can be encouraged to become more truthful about who you really are. It can also make you do silly things though. That mix, at once so genuine and high on hormones, is difficult to capture without somehow making fun of it, but Wait manages it. There are legitimately funny moments in Havoc, which are just so out of left field that you can't help but laugh. Wait has a knack, I think, for characterisation that works itself out largely through showing. We get to know Ida through her actions and then, occasionally, when she reveals herself through speech, we get to reconsider what we know about her. I really enjoy getting to work at it in this way and there are major pay-offs to it throughout Havoc. I'm definitely going to look around for more by Wait!

I give this novel...

4 Universes!

Havoc is a great book, full of well-earned twists and turns, told in intriguing ways. It is a book about girlhood, about the pressures of family and the world, but also about the unhinged chaos of teenagehood.