This Friday, we’re delighted to share the news that Rebecca Wait‘s intricate fourth novel, I’m Sorry You Feel That Way has been acquired by riverrun. UK and Commonwealth rights were bought by publisher Jon Riley from Caroline Hardman. This compelling story of family dynamics is set to be published in July 2022.

Rebecca said: “I’m delighted to be published by riverrun again. Jon and the whole team were fantastic to work with on Our Fathers and I’m so pleased I’m Sorry You Feel That Way will have such a talented and passionate team behind it.”

Jon said: “The entire riverrun team fell precipitously for Rebecca Wait’s stiletto-sharp story of sibling misunderstandings, parental failures and family fractures. It shows Wait as one of the most gifted British novelists of her generation.”

Caroline said: “I’m delighted riverrun will be publishing Rebecca’s stunning literary novel I’m Sorry You Feel That Way, and look forward to working with Jon, Jasmine and the team to continue to build Rebecca’s career as a novelist of note.”

For Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, growing up is a trial.

There is their mother, who takes a divide and conquer approach to child-rearing, and their father, who takes an absent one. There is their older brother Michael, whose disapproval is a force to be reckoned with. There is the catastrophe that is never spoken of, but which has shaped everything.

As adults, Alice and Hanna must deal with disappointments in work and in love as well as increasingly complicated family tensions, and lives that look dismayingly dissimilar to what they’d intended.

They must look for a way to repair their own fractured relationship, and they must finally choose their own approach to their dominant mother: submit or burn the house down.

And they must decide at last whether life is really anything more than (as Hanna would have it) a tragedy with a few hilarious moments.

Rebecca Wait is the author of three critically acclaimed novels, The View on the Way Down (2013), The Followers (2015) and Our Fathers (2020) which was a Waterstones Thriller of the Year. She grew up in Oxfordshire and studied English at Oxford University, graduating with a First Class degree. She lives in London.

You can read the full Bookseller article here.