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In the Days of Rain: A Daughter, a Father, a Cult
A father-daughter story that tells of the the author's experience growing up in the Exclusive Brethren, a fundamentalist, separatist Christian cult, from the author of the national bestseller Ghostwalk.
Rebecca Stott was born a fourth-generation Brethren and she grew up in England, in the Brighton branch of the Exclusive Brethren cult in the early 1960s. Her family dated back to the group's origins in the first half of the nineteenth century, and her father was a high-ranking minister. However, as an intelligent, inquiring child, Stott was always asking dangerous questions and so, it turns out, was her father, who was also full of doubt. When a sex scandal tore the Exclusive Brethren apart in 1970, her father pulled the family out of the cult. But its impact on their lives shaped everything before and all that was to come.
The Iron Room (named for the windowless meeting houses made of corrugated iron where the Brethren would worship) is Stott's attempt to understand and even forgive her father: a brilliant, charismatic, difficult, and at times cruel man who nonetheless inspired his daughter with his love of literature, film, and art and with his passion for life.
Rebecca Stott was born a fourth-generation Brethren and she grew up in England, in the Brighton branch of the Exclusive Brethren cult in the early 1960s. Her family dated back to the group's origins in the first half of the nineteenth century, and her father was a high-ranking minister. However, as an intelligent, inquiring child, Stott was always asking dangerous questions and so, it turns out, was her father, who was also full of doubt. When a sex scandal tore the Exclusive Brethren apart in 1970, her father pulled the family out of the cult. But its impact on their lives shaped everything before and all that was to come.
The Iron Room (named for the windowless meeting houses made of corrugated iron where the Brethren would worship) is Stott's attempt to understand and even forgive her father: a brilliant, charismatic, difficult, and at times cruel man who nonetheless inspired his daughter with his love of literature, film, and art and with his passion for life.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published July 4, 2017
260 people are currently reading
4471 people want to read
About the author
Rebecca Stott
25 books254 followersRebecca Stott was born in Cambridge in 1964 and raised in Brighton in a large Plymouth Brethren community. She studied English and Art History at York University and then completed an MA and PhD whilst raising her son, Jacob, born in 1984.
She is the author of several academic books on Victorian literature and culture, two books of non-fiction, including a partial biography of Charles Darwin, and a cultural history of the oyster. She is now a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has three children, Jacob, Hannah and Kezia and has lived in Cambridge since 1993. She has made several radio programmes for Radio Four.
Her first novel, Ghostwalk, is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in the UK, is the launch novel of the new fiction list of Spiegel and Grau in the US (a new division of Random House) and is being translated into 12 different languages including Russian and Chinese.
She is writing her next novel, The Coral Thief.
She is the author of several academic books on Victorian literature and culture, two books of non-fiction, including a partial biography of Charles Darwin, and a cultural history of the oyster. She is now a Professor of English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has three children, Jacob, Hannah and Kezia and has lived in Cambridge since 1993. She has made several radio programmes for Radio Four.
Her first novel, Ghostwalk, is published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson in the UK, is the launch novel of the new fiction list of Spiegel and Grau in the US (a new division of Random House) and is being translated into 12 different languages including Russian and Chinese.
She is writing her next novel, The Coral Thief.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 343 reviews
August 8, 2022
DNF. This should have been a fabulously interesting book, but was a deadly dull history of the Exclusive Brethren. The rest is about her father, his dying, how he'd been in prison, her forebears were fisherfolk and very uninteresting stories about their family. I really don't need a whole paragraph on how such minutae as how some people dressed up and went outside to have their photo taken and the only impressive one was her father (of course) as he looked romantic.
The author can write well, perhaps other people will appreciate a detailed blow by blow of her family and the Exclusive Brethren, but I can't subject myself to this any longer. Two stars becasue I am bored by it, not one for hating it.
___________
My grandmother's gardener a tall, very handsome man, was Exclusive Brethren from a community near the one in the book. Although he worked at my grandparent's full time for years, he never spoke to us children. He hardly spoke at all and would never eat with us or even any of the fabulous cakes my grandmother made. She said his Church believed we were all sinners in a sinful world and he could only eat with people of his church and did not carry on social conversations with anyone. They believed they were separate from us and should not mix with us at all. But, my grandmother said, they are good, honest people who do well in life, so we should respect their beliefs.
I wonder if this book is going to change that respect? There are many books written by people, usually women, leaving some religion and they usually present the religion as an unholy patriarchy determined to repress and use women for their wombs and work and to punish even the men who upset the apple cart. Justifying all this from their interpretation of whatever book they consider holy and 'divinely inspired'
No one ever leaves a religion and says, well it was a good life growing up with them. The women are equal and there is plenty of joy, I just felt I could no longer go along with it's core beliefs. No one says that because there is no book. So with these books, how much is a genuine expose of ritual repression and how much is it really about this or any other author's family and their expectation of her obedience and conformity to their religious and cultural code and how they handle her rebellion?
Another thought. When is a cult big enough to be called a religion? Or are religions all cults when we they are not accepted as conforming to the societies they arise in?
The author can write well, perhaps other people will appreciate a detailed blow by blow of her family and the Exclusive Brethren, but I can't subject myself to this any longer. Two stars becasue I am bored by it, not one for hating it.
___________
My grandmother's gardener a tall, very handsome man, was Exclusive Brethren from a community near the one in the book. Although he worked at my grandparent's full time for years, he never spoke to us children. He hardly spoke at all and would never eat with us or even any of the fabulous cakes my grandmother made. She said his Church believed we were all sinners in a sinful world and he could only eat with people of his church and did not carry on social conversations with anyone. They believed they were separate from us and should not mix with us at all. But, my grandmother said, they are good, honest people who do well in life, so we should respect their beliefs.
I wonder if this book is going to change that respect? There are many books written by people, usually women, leaving some religion and they usually present the religion as an unholy patriarchy determined to repress and use women for their wombs and work and to punish even the men who upset the apple cart. Justifying all this from their interpretation of whatever book they consider holy and 'divinely inspired'
No one ever leaves a religion and says, well it was a good life growing up with them. The women are equal and there is plenty of joy, I just felt I could no longer go along with it's core beliefs. No one says that because there is no book. So with these books, how much is a genuine expose of ritual repression and how much is it really about this or any other author's family and their expectation of her obedience and conformity to their religious and cultural code and how they handle her rebellion?
Another thought. When is a cult big enough to be called a religion? Or are religions all cults when we they are not accepted as conforming to the societies they arise in?
May 2, 2018
This was a perfect book for my interests, and just the kind of thing I would love to write someday. It’s a bereavement memoir that opens with Stott’s father succumbing to pancreatic cancer and eliciting her promise to help finish his languishing memoir; it’s a family memoir that tracks generations through England, Scotland and Australia; and it’s a story of faith and doubt, of the absolute certainty experienced inside the Exclusive Brethren (a Christian sect that numbers 45,000 worldwide) and how that cracked until there was no choice but to leave.
Stott grew up with an apocalyptic mindset, always expecting the Devil’s interventions and the End Times. She remembers being angry and afraid all the time. The 1960s, when she was a child, were a time of retrenchment for the Brethren: under JT Junior, the rules became stricter than ever. Brethren weren’t to have any contact with nonbelievers, even doctors or their own family members. They couldn’t join unions or go to movies. There was a spate of Brethren suicides, and a mass exodus in 1970 when a sex scandal involving JT Junior broke. Against this backdrop her father, a Brethren minister turned actor and gambler (he later went to prison for embezzling from his company to fund his gambling), is a larger-than-life figure: “My first memories of my father are of the walking-on-eggshells kind. He was big, he was volatile, and though he was often affectionate and funny, his affection sometimes had a sharp edge.”
The book conveys a huge amount of information about Brethren and family history but never loses sight of what is most important: what it was actually like to be in a cult and have your life defined by its rules and its paranoia about the outside world. The book is divided into rough thirds, “Before,” “During” and “Aftermath,” and in the final section it is particularly fascinating to see how both the author and her father rebuilt their lives without the foundation of religion. He fell in love with Ingmar Bergman films and Yeats poetry; bought cars and crashed them; went to casinos. She engaged in minor acts of teenage rebellion – hippie clothes, pot – and had her imagination captured by Darwin’s ideas. For the first time she learned to trust her intellect and to be willing to admit doubts.
I now want to read everything else Stott has written, especially her two historical novels and two nonfiction books about Darwin. I own one of each.
Favorite lines:
“I was constantly watching – or listening – for Satan, hearing the tapping of his hooves on the cobblestones in the streets of Brighton, looking at the children in the primary school playground and imagining the scale of the wickedness in their homes.”
“Why had these decent young Brethren men turned into bullies? Because closed, rule-bound, discipline-focused totalist systems like the one we lived through made dissent virtually impossible. It paralysed people.”
a Brethren motto: “Let us put away our playthings for the world is in flames.”
Stott grew up with an apocalyptic mindset, always expecting the Devil’s interventions and the End Times. She remembers being angry and afraid all the time. The 1960s, when she was a child, were a time of retrenchment for the Brethren: under JT Junior, the rules became stricter than ever. Brethren weren’t to have any contact with nonbelievers, even doctors or their own family members. They couldn’t join unions or go to movies. There was a spate of Brethren suicides, and a mass exodus in 1970 when a sex scandal involving JT Junior broke. Against this backdrop her father, a Brethren minister turned actor and gambler (he later went to prison for embezzling from his company to fund his gambling), is a larger-than-life figure: “My first memories of my father are of the walking-on-eggshells kind. He was big, he was volatile, and though he was often affectionate and funny, his affection sometimes had a sharp edge.”
The book conveys a huge amount of information about Brethren and family history but never loses sight of what is most important: what it was actually like to be in a cult and have your life defined by its rules and its paranoia about the outside world. The book is divided into rough thirds, “Before,” “During” and “Aftermath,” and in the final section it is particularly fascinating to see how both the author and her father rebuilt their lives without the foundation of religion. He fell in love with Ingmar Bergman films and Yeats poetry; bought cars and crashed them; went to casinos. She engaged in minor acts of teenage rebellion – hippie clothes, pot – and had her imagination captured by Darwin’s ideas. For the first time she learned to trust her intellect and to be willing to admit doubts.
I now want to read everything else Stott has written, especially her two historical novels and two nonfiction books about Darwin. I own one of each.
Favorite lines:
“I was constantly watching – or listening – for Satan, hearing the tapping of his hooves on the cobblestones in the streets of Brighton, looking at the children in the primary school playground and imagining the scale of the wickedness in their homes.”
“Why had these decent young Brethren men turned into bullies? Because closed, rule-bound, discipline-focused totalist systems like the one we lived through made dissent virtually impossible. It paralysed people.”
a Brethren motto: “Let us put away our playthings for the world is in flames.”
September 19, 2018
This book is an incredibly interesting memoir, about being born into, and growing up in the Brethren, which was a Christian cult, that separates members from everything seemingly worldly. This was mainly set in Brighton, England, in the early 1970's. What actually started as a somewhat strict religious community, eventually evolved into a cult mainly due to a change of leadership. The leader, named Jim Taylor junior, came from New York City, to lead the community. This resulted in members being bullied, secluded from other people outside of their community, and also resulted in suicides, because they were told that outside of the Brethren, there is only Satan.
The men were the all important people in the Brethren, women and children were second best. The women were not allowed to give their opinions, and had to wear headscarves and dress plainly. No fashionable wear was allowed. Televisions, radios and going to the cinema, were also banned.
When the family finally leave the Brethren, their lives are told in a different perspective, as they try to fit in to the outside world again, and also finding they have the freedom of choice. The book is divided into three sections. I think the "Before" section is pretty heavy going, especially with the amount of family history that is included, but the other two sections make this book so important, and a very worthwhile read.
The men were the all important people in the Brethren, women and children were second best. The women were not allowed to give their opinions, and had to wear headscarves and dress plainly. No fashionable wear was allowed. Televisions, radios and going to the cinema, were also banned.
When the family finally leave the Brethren, their lives are told in a different perspective, as they try to fit in to the outside world again, and also finding they have the freedom of choice. The book is divided into three sections. I think the "Before" section is pretty heavy going, especially with the amount of family history that is included, but the other two sections make this book so important, and a very worthwhile read.
June 18, 2022
A lovely, fascinating book, with a tremendous lead character and some powerful glimpses into the life of an idiosyncratic UK cult - I am actually staying at the writing residency where the beginning is set!
March 21, 2022
This is a quiet, somewhat scholarly reflection on one family's involvement with - and eventual disconnection from - a fundamentalist cult. My biggest takeaway is how consistently the leaders of such cults go legit crazy, reduced to their basest whims as their subjects lose the capacity to critically think and effectively resist.
The leader of this cult, Jim Taylor junior, winds up drinking to the point of brain damage and eventual dementia, grabbing all the ladies boobies in plain view of their spouses (also taking a few to bed), and using his pulpit time to spew the most dirty brown trash water imaginable.
Nobody can handle absolute power, and nobody should be allowed to try.
The leader of this cult, Jim Taylor junior, winds up drinking to the point of brain damage and eventual dementia, grabbing all the ladies boobies in plain view of their spouses (also taking a few to bed), and using his pulpit time to spew the most dirty brown trash water imaginable.
Nobody can handle absolute power, and nobody should be allowed to try.
July 26, 2017
Full review at TheBibliophage.com
As her father is dying, Rebecca Stott agrees to finish his memoirs. In doing so, she tells the story of four generations including her own. Starting with her great-grandfather, her family had been part of a religious sect called the Brethren. While her family is located in England, the Protestant sect had members and various divisions throughout the world.
At the center of the story is the decade of the 1960s, which Stott’s father dramatically refers to as the “Nazi decade.” During this time, the leader of the Brethren became more and more eccentric and exclusive, essentially creating a cult rather than a religious sect. Many of their practices reminded me of Scientology, based on memoirs like Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology and Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape.
So much of the story is sad and frustrating that I wouldn’t call this a fun book. But it’s fascinating to slip inside a quasi-religious cult without having to actually join.
Thanks to NetGalley, Random House, Spiegel & Grau, and the author for a digital advance reader’s copy in exchange for this honest review.
As her father is dying, Rebecca Stott agrees to finish his memoirs. In doing so, she tells the story of four generations including her own. Starting with her great-grandfather, her family had been part of a religious sect called the Brethren. While her family is located in England, the Protestant sect had members and various divisions throughout the world.
At the center of the story is the decade of the 1960s, which Stott’s father dramatically refers to as the “Nazi decade.” During this time, the leader of the Brethren became more and more eccentric and exclusive, essentially creating a cult rather than a religious sect. Many of their practices reminded me of Scientology, based on memoirs like Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology and Beyond Belief: My Secret Life Inside Scientology and My Harrowing Escape.
So much of the story is sad and frustrating that I wouldn’t call this a fun book. But it’s fascinating to slip inside a quasi-religious cult without having to actually join.
Thanks to NetGalley, Random House, Spiegel & Grau, and the author for a digital advance reader’s copy in exchange for this honest review.
August 4, 2018
A little dry in points, but otherwise very interesting.
January 17, 2018
I must admit I don’t understand the hype with this book.
The premise of life in a cult could have been so interesting , but this was boring and lacked character in the telling.
I don’t feel that I got to know the father , the narrator or much about the cult to be honest. A very matter of fact read , but there have been much better books based on being in a cult out there that I have read.
The premise of life in a cult could have been so interesting , but this was boring and lacked character in the telling.
I don’t feel that I got to know the father , the narrator or much about the cult to be honest. A very matter of fact read , but there have been much better books based on being in a cult out there that I have read.
February 17, 2020
A FANTASTIC READ! I will be writing the review for this book in the coming days as my head is spinning with so many things to say about this book. There is so much to learn from this book about cults and sects and how people wrongly perceive them. I read this book for my own novel's research and I'm really happy to have read this book as it was a really, really good read.
August 28, 2018
This is a sad but gripping true story of Rebecca Stott's family who were 'caught up in' the Exclusive Brethren. 'Caught up in' being the phrase that her mother always used when describing their time in the Exclusive Brethren. They are a group who claim to be Christians but who exhibit an alarming amount of very un-Christian like behaviour. Their overall leader is known as the Elect Vessel and claims to be a prophet of God. He claims to speak the absolute word of God and if members do not agree with him they are immediately ‘withdrawn’. In most religions being ‘withdrawn’ or ‘excommunicated’ would mean that you are no longer on the membership list of that church. In the Exclusive Brethren it means that you are no longer to associate with members. So if you are 'withdrawn' you may well be immediately separated from your spouse, children, parent and entire family. This has led to severe mental health issues and many suicides.
Rebecca’s father, Robert, is dying of cancer as the book starts but wants his story to be known by the whole world as a warning not to get 'caught up in' groups like the Exclusive Brethren. Robert doesn't finish dictating his memoirs to Rebecca as they are both too lengthy and too painful for him to go over. He extols her to finish the book for him from the archives which he's left. A few years after his death she finally finds the strength to author this extraordinary book.
We hear of Rebecca's young childhood in the last half of the 1960s when her family was still in the church. She was in a constant state of 'high alert' as they were warned that the rapture was close and that church members in good standing would be taken first. She spent much of her early years worrying that she’s be left behind and her whole family would be taken. Once at school she was not allowed to take part in many things as the church did not allow it. The list grew yearly and wasn’t just things like school assemblies but included classes about poetry or fiction, science about the creation story, gym, music, sports and many other things. So she often found herself in the long central corridor doing worksheets while seeing her brothers also in that corridor on their own. After a she got to go to the school library where she started devouring normal books but had to keep this a secret from her family as it wasn't allowed. The frightening thing is that this was happening in the 1960s and 1970s, not the 1860s and 1870s. We will not see this in schools nowadays as the group have their own schools so there is less chance of rescuing these abused children.
Rebecca traces her ancestors back to the 1800s where she tries to understand how they got 'caught up in' the Exclusive Brethren. At first it was just an extreme version of Christianity but as the years went on the rules got stricter and stricter with changes of leadership. In the 1960s James Taylor Junior took on the role of Elect Vessel and things got very desperate. Members were not allowed to be in unions or members of professional bodies so many lost their jobs. They were only encouraged to work for one another. They were to live in detached houses and to only eat with members. If family were non-members they were not to eat with them and later on were not even allowed to live with them. Families were ripped apart and suicides increased. In 1970 James Taylor Junior was involved in a sex scandal. Many of the leaders worked hard to cover it up but the group imploded with many leaving. They set up their own Brethren churches with various names and it got even more fractious as they fought and further split.
The Stott family finally left the church but as we found out in the 'Aftermath' section that the whole experience has had far reaching mental and emotional consequences on the families of the ex-members to this day.
This is an important story to tell and I commend Rebecca Stott for her fortitude and courage in telling it. Let's hope that as a result of it groups like the Exclusive Brethren, the FLDS and hundreds of others around the world lose their grip on power and people are rescued from them.
Rebecca’s father, Robert, is dying of cancer as the book starts but wants his story to be known by the whole world as a warning not to get 'caught up in' groups like the Exclusive Brethren. Robert doesn't finish dictating his memoirs to Rebecca as they are both too lengthy and too painful for him to go over. He extols her to finish the book for him from the archives which he's left. A few years after his death she finally finds the strength to author this extraordinary book.
We hear of Rebecca's young childhood in the last half of the 1960s when her family was still in the church. She was in a constant state of 'high alert' as they were warned that the rapture was close and that church members in good standing would be taken first. She spent much of her early years worrying that she’s be left behind and her whole family would be taken. Once at school she was not allowed to take part in many things as the church did not allow it. The list grew yearly and wasn’t just things like school assemblies but included classes about poetry or fiction, science about the creation story, gym, music, sports and many other things. So she often found herself in the long central corridor doing worksheets while seeing her brothers also in that corridor on their own. After a she got to go to the school library where she started devouring normal books but had to keep this a secret from her family as it wasn't allowed. The frightening thing is that this was happening in the 1960s and 1970s, not the 1860s and 1870s. We will not see this in schools nowadays as the group have their own schools so there is less chance of rescuing these abused children.
Rebecca traces her ancestors back to the 1800s where she tries to understand how they got 'caught up in' the Exclusive Brethren. At first it was just an extreme version of Christianity but as the years went on the rules got stricter and stricter with changes of leadership. In the 1960s James Taylor Junior took on the role of Elect Vessel and things got very desperate. Members were not allowed to be in unions or members of professional bodies so many lost their jobs. They were only encouraged to work for one another. They were to live in detached houses and to only eat with members. If family were non-members they were not to eat with them and later on were not even allowed to live with them. Families were ripped apart and suicides increased. In 1970 James Taylor Junior was involved in a sex scandal. Many of the leaders worked hard to cover it up but the group imploded with many leaving. They set up their own Brethren churches with various names and it got even more fractious as they fought and further split.
The Stott family finally left the church but as we found out in the 'Aftermath' section that the whole experience has had far reaching mental and emotional consequences on the families of the ex-members to this day.
This is an important story to tell and I commend Rebecca Stott for her fortitude and courage in telling it. Let's hope that as a result of it groups like the Exclusive Brethren, the FLDS and hundreds of others around the world lose their grip on power and people are rescued from them.
April 2, 2019
I grew up in the Exclusive Brethren though my parents left when the ‘eating’ issue came in but we continued in our own ex-Exclusive meeting until I was 14. Nevertheless, I still found Rebecca Stott’s account horrifying. Much of it resonates with me but there were things I didn’t know about the Taylorites that made me incredibly sad, that people can be so blinded to reality and truth because of a man’s ego, because they have faith in that man. I was also sad for the author’s father who never recovered from the spiritual abuse of the cult. A tragic book but I found it enlightening and am glad I read it.
December 3, 2019
Rebecca Stott (Professor of Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia) was raised within the Exclusive Brethren, a religious group that she describes as a "cult"; a damning term, yet one that she fully justifies. The title gives a perfect image of how she lived: as a child waiting for the second Flood, not sure if she would be part of the Rapture or not (and thus be saved); as a young girl with no voice among a world of men, clinging to any love that might become an ark. The memoir traces the history of the Exclusive Brethren, the rise of her powerful grandfather within the ranks, and then the mantle that fell on her father, Roger Stott. The book builds towards the Aberdeen scandal and the imploding of the brethren, at which point the Stotts were "withdrawn" from, excluded, and sent into exile in a new wilderness.
Rebecca Stott's memoir could be a history of horrors (and in some ways it is). The Exclusive Brethren dislike all forms of excess until it comes to the excessive policing of ideas and actions. Contact with non-brethen brought uncleanliness and expulsion, total silence, as a result of which families were ripped apart. Exclusive Brethren could not join political unions or eat with non-Brethren. All forms of media were banned. Instead of writing another horror story about life in a cult, Rebecca Stott concentrates on the human issues, how her father spiralled into a world of mad speed, literally like the car he drove without braking; how her mother tried to cope when the world turned from grey to colour; and how she refused to be a silent girl that obeyed St. Paul, trespassed into a school library, broke into private rooms, and found a voice of her own.
This is a dazzling and dizzying memoir that is written with literary conviction and each word is a nail in the world of artistry that the Exclusive Brethren denied. In some ways it is a memoir of the triumph of art over the Philistines, the human spirit over the taxidermied Holy Spirit.
Rebecca Stott's memoir could be a history of horrors (and in some ways it is). The Exclusive Brethren dislike all forms of excess until it comes to the excessive policing of ideas and actions. Contact with non-brethen brought uncleanliness and expulsion, total silence, as a result of which families were ripped apart. Exclusive Brethren could not join political unions or eat with non-Brethren. All forms of media were banned. Instead of writing another horror story about life in a cult, Rebecca Stott concentrates on the human issues, how her father spiralled into a world of mad speed, literally like the car he drove without braking; how her mother tried to cope when the world turned from grey to colour; and how she refused to be a silent girl that obeyed St. Paul, trespassed into a school library, broke into private rooms, and found a voice of her own.
This is a dazzling and dizzying memoir that is written with literary conviction and each word is a nail in the world of artistry that the Exclusive Brethren denied. In some ways it is a memoir of the triumph of art over the Philistines, the human spirit over the taxidermied Holy Spirit.
September 16, 2017
A big thank you to Rebecca Stott, Spiegel and Grau, and Netgalley for the free copy of this book in exchange for an unbiased review.
Rebecca's family belonged to a fundamentalist Brethren cult in England. She was fourth generation. It took the strength and willpower of her father to pull the family out, but not before suffering the typical neglect and discrimination associated with belonging to these religious groups.
Rebecca sets out to tell her father's story in this book- his childhood, his marriages, his rise in the church, and his abandonment. She follows him until his death.
This is an informative piece. I had never heard of the Exclusive Brethren. It's a moving tribute to her father's memory as well as a cathartic action in Rebecca's healing and forgiving process. I'm certain she views her father in a different light now. We should all have to opportunity to have our fathers open up their pasts to us.
Rebecca's family belonged to a fundamentalist Brethren cult in England. She was fourth generation. It took the strength and willpower of her father to pull the family out, but not before suffering the typical neglect and discrimination associated with belonging to these religious groups.
Rebecca sets out to tell her father's story in this book- his childhood, his marriages, his rise in the church, and his abandonment. She follows him until his death.
This is an informative piece. I had never heard of the Exclusive Brethren. It's a moving tribute to her father's memory as well as a cathartic action in Rebecca's healing and forgiving process. I'm certain she views her father in a different light now. We should all have to opportunity to have our fathers open up their pasts to us.
February 28, 2020
Rebecca Stott’s father had been wanting to write a memoir about his family life. For generations, his family had been members of a Christian sect that had steadily got more fundamentalist. He could only brush the surface of the past though as every time he ventured deeper into his memories the mental anguish meant that he could not carry on. When he was dying, he tried to persuade her to help him.
Rebecca had grown up in this Brethren sect too, with its draconian rules about what the members could and mostly couldn’t do, she was constrained in almost every activity that a normal child would have taken part in. They attended school but were not allowed to participate in any activities other than the learning. It was cruel too, with long term members being ‘denounced’ for the most arbitrary of reasons. The sect imploded to a certain extent after a sex scandal involving the American leader of the sect, JT Junior.
Her family dropped out too after this event, but because the cult had been so suffocating the family so much, they all struggled to re-connect with the normal world. The messages and culture that the cult had delivered had permeated her entire being. They began to rebuild their lives in their own way, she rebelled a little, had a child, dabbled in drugs and even managed to go to university, shoplifted and was afraid of the dark, but couldn’t even begin to tell people why this was.
The book is divided into rough thirds, “Before,” “During” and “Aftermath”, which were the piles of files and effects that she sorted through of her fathers at the time. It is pretty horrific reading at times, in particular about the levels of control that were exercised over the members, and the utter trust they had in the leaders of the cult. Just decompressing from the grip of the cult took a staggering amount of effort for them all. It is a deeply personal book, thankfully Stott writes with integrity and doesn’t try to blame anyone for her earlier life. Well worth reading for those that want a very different biography and to get some insight as to when does faith become a cult?
Rebecca had grown up in this Brethren sect too, with its draconian rules about what the members could and mostly couldn’t do, she was constrained in almost every activity that a normal child would have taken part in. They attended school but were not allowed to participate in any activities other than the learning. It was cruel too, with long term members being ‘denounced’ for the most arbitrary of reasons. The sect imploded to a certain extent after a sex scandal involving the American leader of the sect, JT Junior.
Her family dropped out too after this event, but because the cult had been so suffocating the family so much, they all struggled to re-connect with the normal world. The messages and culture that the cult had delivered had permeated her entire being. They began to rebuild their lives in their own way, she rebelled a little, had a child, dabbled in drugs and even managed to go to university, shoplifted and was afraid of the dark, but couldn’t even begin to tell people why this was.
The book is divided into rough thirds, “Before,” “During” and “Aftermath”, which were the piles of files and effects that she sorted through of her fathers at the time. It is pretty horrific reading at times, in particular about the levels of control that were exercised over the members, and the utter trust they had in the leaders of the cult. Just decompressing from the grip of the cult took a staggering amount of effort for them all. It is a deeply personal book, thankfully Stott writes with integrity and doesn’t try to blame anyone for her earlier life. Well worth reading for those that want a very different biography and to get some insight as to when does faith become a cult?
May 31, 2020
A memoir exploring Stott’s childhood in the Exclusive Brethren, a very strict Christian sect that became a cult in the ’60s and was rocked by a sex scandal in the ’70s. Stott’s father, who had been a pillar of their EB community in Brighton, pulled the family out then, and the book is something of an attempt to lay his ghost (Stott uses this metaphor herself) after he dies several decades later. It’s beautifully written, a thoughtful, curious, compassionate and fascinating account of religious mania but also of her family history and her father’s character. She has, apparently, written at least two novels as well, though this is what won her the Costa biography prize in 2017; her fiction must be well worth seeking out.
March 20, 2018
Sometimes the line between a church and a cult can be a thin one. Spiritual abuse can happen in both. I found this book to be very eye-opening and thought provoking, as well as very honestly portraying how cults, The Brethren in particular, operate.
We all think we'd be able to spot them from a mile away, well maybe not. It seems you need to know the truth first in order to be able to discern the false. If the false is believed first, then it seems, the truth becomes harder to grasp or trust.
We all think we'd be able to spot them from a mile away, well maybe not. It seems you need to know the truth first in order to be able to discern the false. If the false is believed first, then it seems, the truth becomes harder to grasp or trust.
January 27, 2020
Fascinating memoir about the cult that Rebecca Stott grew up in, and her life (and that of her father) after her family leaves. The audio version is read beautifully by Rebecca, and the writing is great. There is quite a bit of history about the closed brethren group she belonged to, and although I could see this was needed for background, it was how the rules affected individuals (often with tragic consequences) and her family in particular that I was most interested in. Highly recommended.
July 4, 2017
Rapture, rupture and re-entry to the world.
Rebecca Stott’s memoir about her family’s involvement with the Exclusive Brethren is divided into three parts: her formative years in the sect, her father’s disillusionment when scandal engulfed its leadership and the family’s subsequent withdrawal from the group to become part of ‘the normal world’.
The Exclusive Brethren, a subset of the Plymouth Brethren, is a cultish evangelist movement with some 43,000 members worldwide. It holds that the devout amongst their numbers will be chosen to rise up to the heavens in a Rapture, the rest being left to endure the Tribulation in an end-of-days scenario. It shuns any form of contact with the outside world.
Ms Stott writes in cool, calm prose. If anything, she plays down the impact such an extremist upbringing must have had on her and her siblings. Describing the treatment of ex-cult members after long periods of mind control and comparing it with her own experience, she says (and this is about as dramatic as she gets): “I wouldn’t call it ‘deprogramming’, I’d call it ‘decompression’. We’d been a very long way down to the bottom of the sea. There was no easy way back up without getting the bends.” This is a non-sensationalist memoir and an enlightening reading experience.
Rebecca Stott’s memoir about her family’s involvement with the Exclusive Brethren is divided into three parts: her formative years in the sect, her father’s disillusionment when scandal engulfed its leadership and the family’s subsequent withdrawal from the group to become part of ‘the normal world’.
The Exclusive Brethren, a subset of the Plymouth Brethren, is a cultish evangelist movement with some 43,000 members worldwide. It holds that the devout amongst their numbers will be chosen to rise up to the heavens in a Rapture, the rest being left to endure the Tribulation in an end-of-days scenario. It shuns any form of contact with the outside world.
Ms Stott writes in cool, calm prose. If anything, she plays down the impact such an extremist upbringing must have had on her and her siblings. Describing the treatment of ex-cult members after long periods of mind control and comparing it with her own experience, she says (and this is about as dramatic as she gets): “I wouldn’t call it ‘deprogramming’, I’d call it ‘decompression’. We’d been a very long way down to the bottom of the sea. There was no easy way back up without getting the bends.” This is a non-sensationalist memoir and an enlightening reading experience.
June 13, 2017
An interesting read about Rebecca Stott, her father, and building a life after leaving the Exclusive Brethren. As Stott's father is dying he asks for her help to complete his memoir but he has been stuck on writing about the 1960's - he needs to face what he became while in the all-consuming cult the Exclusive Brethren became.
Stott was born into the Exclusive Brethren, just as her father had been. When Stott was born the Brethren were a strict religion but in the 1960's and 70's it crossed the line from being strict to being a cult. Under the leadership of "The Man of God" the already demanding religion becomes life consuming with assemblies everyday and multiple services on Sunday, members being told they cannot eat with non-members (and even working with non-members was frowned upon).
All ties with the "worldly" people (sinners in Brethren eyes)were to be cut. This included spouses who were not fully committed to the Brethren life. Television, movies, music, and any books apart from the bible and the brethren ministries are banned. Children attended public school but teachers remove them from lessons that contradict Brethren teachings (science / biology / literature / other religions / etc. )
People lost jobs and livelihoods as they attempted to comply - some committed suicide as they lost everything and suffered loneliness and isolation. Senior members interrogated others about perceived "sins" and members deemed to have transgressed are "shut-up" within their own houses - completely without contact from even their own families until they are deemed to have been cleansed.
Told in three parts: Before, During, and After, Stott traces her family and what motivated her ancestors to join the Brethren in the first place and her father's early life. In During, Stott recalls her own experiences as a young child as more and more restrictions were imposed on her family's life. She also talks to her father's contemporaries to build a picture of the brethren politics at the time and to build a picture of what her father was doing that he so struggled to deal with later.
When Stott was in her early teens her parents made the momentous decision to leave the Brethren. After being told all her life that the outside world was full of sinners and evil suddenly she had to learn to live amongst it.
As she struggled, her father was fighting his own demons - away from the restrictions of the Brethren he became addicted to gambling. Meanwhile her mother held the five children together and struggled to make ends meet.
This is not just a daughter struggling to understand her father and his motivations, but also the experience of a cult survivor and her journey back into normal life at an age when most are just trying to establish a teenage identity.
Whether you have an interest in the Exclusive Brethren or just cults in general this is a fascinating look at the effects of living in what was essentially a doomsday cult.
Stott was born into the Exclusive Brethren, just as her father had been. When Stott was born the Brethren were a strict religion but in the 1960's and 70's it crossed the line from being strict to being a cult. Under the leadership of "The Man of God" the already demanding religion becomes life consuming with assemblies everyday and multiple services on Sunday, members being told they cannot eat with non-members (and even working with non-members was frowned upon).
All ties with the "worldly" people (sinners in Brethren eyes)were to be cut. This included spouses who were not fully committed to the Brethren life. Television, movies, music, and any books apart from the bible and the brethren ministries are banned. Children attended public school but teachers remove them from lessons that contradict Brethren teachings (science / biology / literature / other religions / etc. )
People lost jobs and livelihoods as they attempted to comply - some committed suicide as they lost everything and suffered loneliness and isolation. Senior members interrogated others about perceived "sins" and members deemed to have transgressed are "shut-up" within their own houses - completely without contact from even their own families until they are deemed to have been cleansed.
Told in three parts: Before, During, and After, Stott traces her family and what motivated her ancestors to join the Brethren in the first place and her father's early life. In During, Stott recalls her own experiences as a young child as more and more restrictions were imposed on her family's life. She also talks to her father's contemporaries to build a picture of the brethren politics at the time and to build a picture of what her father was doing that he so struggled to deal with later.
When Stott was in her early teens her parents made the momentous decision to leave the Brethren. After being told all her life that the outside world was full of sinners and evil suddenly she had to learn to live amongst it.
As she struggled, her father was fighting his own demons - away from the restrictions of the Brethren he became addicted to gambling. Meanwhile her mother held the five children together and struggled to make ends meet.
This is not just a daughter struggling to understand her father and his motivations, but also the experience of a cult survivor and her journey back into normal life at an age when most are just trying to establish a teenage identity.
Whether you have an interest in the Exclusive Brethren or just cults in general this is a fascinating look at the effects of living in what was essentially a doomsday cult.
August 19, 2017
Rebecca Stott's family has been in a religious group named the Extreme Brethren for several generations. In the 1970s, her father kicked out to the family's relief but her father's folly. The book is extremely readable and difficult to put down. I read it in two days. The author uses her father's death as an umbrella event to tell her family's story. He has cancer and she is the family member who volunteering to watch over him as he spends time in the hospital and at home slowly dying. The father has spent considerable time in his life trying to write his autobiography and account of growing up in the Brethren which Rebecca refers to as a cult. He asked her to help clean up the book and allow him to dictate to her his life. Rebecca breaks the book into four parts: Reckoning, Before, During, Aftermath. The reckoning is introducing the readers to the the family, the Brethren and why telling their account is so important to their lives and maybe others. Rebecca researched the cult and how this particular group got started. Her grandparents were swept up in their community which had a number of the Extreme Brethren. The cult provided leadership, clear orders and developed a dialect to relate and connect to each other. The group believed that the rapture was near and that me must be ready with cleanliness and preparedness in order to go. Men and women had clear roles and required looks and outfits to wear. The history is very interesting. Check it out. Rebecca's father is born into the cult and Rebecca is too. Both are highly intelligent and look to books to open their minds and discover the outside world the cult told them was controlled by Satan and to be tempted was to be left behind when the rapture arrived. In the 60s, a man became the leader of the cult whose domination forced a much more restrictive, harsher climate. Eventually the father ran afoul of the leader after a terrible scandal and they family was forced out. Life was more satisfying and better for most of the members though they were confused by the outside culture and the linguistic differences. The father unfortunately, had difficulty controlling himself as he had always been controlled. He disappointed his family in many ways and appeared manic in my opinion. But as he lay dying, Rebecca tries to reconcile the tragic loss of her father in death as well as the last few years of his life. He begs her to help him document the worst years of the cult after he left. He called them the Nazi Years. Cultists were guided with such severe leadership, that people committed suicide, murdered and family breakups as people left the cult and were shunned by their family, never to talk to them again. I found this book affecting and enlightening. Rebecca Stoll is able to describe how people get caught in cults and the psychological fear of leaving, after one has left that doesn't go away. I highly recommend this book.
June 8, 2017
I've always been fascinated by religious cults, particularly since I now believe I had once been introduced to one. This book is written by an adult daughter when she comes back home to look after her dying Father, and decides to write about her childhood and her father's involvement in the upper echelon of the Exclusive Brethren. It was a harsh and restrictive time that she grew up in, trying to adapt at making friends and attend school when she wasn't allowed to have contact with those that weren't Exclusive Brethren. She wasn't even allowed to eat with people at the same table that weren't of the same faith. While finding this bizarre, and the rules the group was to follow continually changing, I didn't find it much different than any other book I've read of extreme fundamentalist Christian sects that shun others and become more strict as the group becomes smaller, and there are threats from within especially when the Rapture dates kept changing. The author's skills at writing were good, and the historical references to how the Brethren came about were interesting, but I found that a lot of the information was repetitive and later, just not really interesting.
Thanks to Random House and NetGalley providing a copy of this book for an honest review.
Thanks to Random House and NetGalley providing a copy of this book for an honest review.
May 1, 2018
really enjoyed the beginning and the middle finding the writing occasionally funny even though it's a bit of a dark subject. The end felt anticlimactic although there was now her father's fall to contend with
August 21, 2022
This is well written and the subject is interesting. I’m not sure that you can blame all of the father’s failings on the cult, but it’s an interesting insight into the mindset of this reclusive cult.
December 6, 2020
In The Days Of Rain: A Daughter, A Father, A Cult by Rebecca Stott is a beautifully written memoir. I love the author’s descriptions of the English countryside. They make me wish I could travel. The book is mostly about the author’s father. He was a Shakespearian actor, a gambling addict, a former prisoner, and a high-ranking member of a religious cult. This memoir is his daughter’s attempt to sort out his messy history in order to understand him better. I have mixed feelings about the book. When the author writes about her own experiences, it’s gripping. She was a paranoid child whose life revolved around the strict rules of a cult. Then a sex scandal caused the cult to fall apart, and her whole life suddenly changed. She didn’t have her church friends or her community anymore. She had to adapt quickly to a new world.
I like the stories about the author’s own life, but she discusses a lot of other things too. She talks about her ancestors. And she talks about movies and poetry. That’s where I struggled. The book occasionally gets dry or pretentious or navel gazing. I found myself zoning out and wanting to skip ahead. The descriptions are so good, though. It’s worth reading for those and the author's childhood experiences.
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“I was constantly watching—or listening—for Satan, hearing the tapping of his hooves on the cobblestones in the streets of Brighton, looking at the children in the primary school playground and imagining the scale of the wickedness in their homes.” – In The Days Of Rain
I like the stories about the author’s own life, but she discusses a lot of other things too. She talks about her ancestors. And she talks about movies and poetry. That’s where I struggled. The book occasionally gets dry or pretentious or navel gazing. I found myself zoning out and wanting to skip ahead. The descriptions are so good, though. It’s worth reading for those and the author's childhood experiences.
Do you like opinions, giveaways, and bookish nonsense?
I have a blog for that.
January 23, 2020
Rebecca Stott's account of growing up as part of the Exclusive Brethren - a fundamentalist Christian sect - eschews sensation for a measured, honest depiction of being part of what she calls a "cult".
Her account starts with her nursing her terminally-ill father - a man who was at once the heart of the Church but left some time before his illness.
He is trying to write a history of it, including his time as a member. It is a task though he is too sick to complete, and so his daughter agrees to see it through.
There is a bit of heavy lifting in the early chapters as Rebecca Stott outlines the history of the Brethren - in between accounts of the final days with her father. It is essential though to understand what underpins the beliefs of the sect.
Later on though we get an account of how the Brethren evolve and get dragged into scandal through the behaviour of their leadership.
The power of In the Days of Rain lies in the impact of life in the sect on Stott, her family and other members. In her depiction, a relatively benign if restrictive organisation becomes corrupted by a leadership who use Gestapo-style tactics to keep control.
She is very good on the psychological impact - the methods of control, the tactics used to isolate and insulate members from outside influences, the sheer terror that by disobeying the rules you may miss out on the eternal life this apocalyptic cult promises the true believer.
Stott though at least survives the experience. There are multiple accounts of members who took their own lives because of the hold the Brethren had on them, and the unbearable impact of their apparent transgressions.
The legacy of her family's time in the Brethren proves tough to shake off. She gradually grows to embrace her freedom, but her father finds it hard to fill the vacuum, becoming a gambling addict and criminal.
And as for the Brethren, though diminished by scandal, they remain active and apparently unreconstructed.
This is a powerful and sad book; one that obviously focuses on the specificity of this particular sect, but has wider lessons about the patriarchal tactics of oppression and control and the damage they cause.
Her account starts with her nursing her terminally-ill father - a man who was at once the heart of the Church but left some time before his illness.
He is trying to write a history of it, including his time as a member. It is a task though he is too sick to complete, and so his daughter agrees to see it through.
There is a bit of heavy lifting in the early chapters as Rebecca Stott outlines the history of the Brethren - in between accounts of the final days with her father. It is essential though to understand what underpins the beliefs of the sect.
Later on though we get an account of how the Brethren evolve and get dragged into scandal through the behaviour of their leadership.
The power of In the Days of Rain lies in the impact of life in the sect on Stott, her family and other members. In her depiction, a relatively benign if restrictive organisation becomes corrupted by a leadership who use Gestapo-style tactics to keep control.
She is very good on the psychological impact - the methods of control, the tactics used to isolate and insulate members from outside influences, the sheer terror that by disobeying the rules you may miss out on the eternal life this apocalyptic cult promises the true believer.
Stott though at least survives the experience. There are multiple accounts of members who took their own lives because of the hold the Brethren had on them, and the unbearable impact of their apparent transgressions.
The legacy of her family's time in the Brethren proves tough to shake off. She gradually grows to embrace her freedom, but her father finds it hard to fill the vacuum, becoming a gambling addict and criminal.
And as for the Brethren, though diminished by scandal, they remain active and apparently unreconstructed.
This is a powerful and sad book; one that obviously focuses on the specificity of this particular sect, but has wider lessons about the patriarchal tactics of oppression and control and the damage they cause.
July 16, 2017
This is a well-written story of growing up in a dysfunctional family--in this case, the Exclusive Brethren, which have congregations all over the world despite being very small. The book reminded me a little of Oranges Are not the Only Fruit, by Jeannette Winterson, except Winterson's book about growing up in a strange English sect was complicated by her being a lesbian and suffering that particular brand of ostracism.
The cult that the author grew up in in the U.K. was so restrictive and harsh that several members who were shunned for a week committed suicide, including one father who killed his wife and all his children with an axe and then hanged himself. The idea of living in 1970 and not even having heard of the Beatles, much less listened to their music, was hard for me to fathom.
The sect broke down when the leader was discovered to be an advanced alcoholic who was having sex with a congregant's wife. The crazed, charismatic leader separating his flock from society seems to be peculiar to cults (see Koresh, David; Jones, Jim; and any number of others). The fact of the leader's being a complete reprobate while operating as a messianic figure always baffles me in terms of the many people that get sucked into each scam cult. This story of how she escapes and discovers the rest of the world is by turns tragic and enlightening. The tragic part is her father, who goes from being an elder to being a gambler and going to prison for it. The enlightening part is her tireless quest to figure out just what life is really about and why the Exclusive Brethren are so weird and world-denying, yet claim to have the true gnosis. A fascinating and intelligent book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in psychology or dysfunctional families and organizations.
The cult that the author grew up in in the U.K. was so restrictive and harsh that several members who were shunned for a week committed suicide, including one father who killed his wife and all his children with an axe and then hanged himself. The idea of living in 1970 and not even having heard of the Beatles, much less listened to their music, was hard for me to fathom.
The sect broke down when the leader was discovered to be an advanced alcoholic who was having sex with a congregant's wife. The crazed, charismatic leader separating his flock from society seems to be peculiar to cults (see Koresh, David; Jones, Jim; and any number of others). The fact of the leader's being a complete reprobate while operating as a messianic figure always baffles me in terms of the many people that get sucked into each scam cult. This story of how she escapes and discovers the rest of the world is by turns tragic and enlightening. The tragic part is her father, who goes from being an elder to being a gambler and going to prison for it. The enlightening part is her tireless quest to figure out just what life is really about and why the Exclusive Brethren are so weird and world-denying, yet claim to have the true gnosis. A fascinating and intelligent book. I would recommend it to anyone interested in psychology or dysfunctional families and organizations.
October 27, 2018
I have an interest in religious cults and I have a read a lot of books on the subject, including memoirs from former members; but I’d never heard of The Brethren. I was surprised therefore to find out that it existed in the U.K. and that the author had grown up within a cult in liberal, progressive Brighton - a place I know very well.
“In the Days of Rain” tells the author’s story but is particularly centred on her father, who, as a former member, had intended to write his memoirs but died before he could complete the task. Roger Stott comes across as a formidable figure, if at times terrifying, who steals the show in the book: Stott herself cannot compete with her Yeats quoting, Bible wielding, whisky glugging father.
Written in a beautifully evocative style, “In the Days of Rain” is no ordinary memoir: at times it reads like a novel, reminding me of another - albeit fictional - memoir, ‘My Name is Lucy Barton’ by Elizabeth Strout, only this is a true story that, astonishingly, took place in modern Britain. Regardless, Stott’s account of her life within The Brethren makes for compelling reading - I could not put it down. A terrific memoir and a must for any self-professed cult scholar.
“In the Days of Rain” tells the author’s story but is particularly centred on her father, who, as a former member, had intended to write his memoirs but died before he could complete the task. Roger Stott comes across as a formidable figure, if at times terrifying, who steals the show in the book: Stott herself cannot compete with her Yeats quoting, Bible wielding, whisky glugging father.
Written in a beautifully evocative style, “In the Days of Rain” is no ordinary memoir: at times it reads like a novel, reminding me of another - albeit fictional - memoir, ‘My Name is Lucy Barton’ by Elizabeth Strout, only this is a true story that, astonishingly, took place in modern Britain. Regardless, Stott’s account of her life within The Brethren makes for compelling reading - I could not put it down. A terrific memoir and a must for any self-professed cult scholar.
May 27, 2018
Personally I found the book captivating and couldn't put it down - well, sometimes I had to, I'm a bit of a slow reader. I've read a couple of books by daughters of strange fathers ("Banished", "I Fired God", "Fiction Ruined My Family") but at least Rebecca Stott's dad got them out of a cult instead of into one.
Not much else I can say that other reviewers haven't said - it's either your cup of tea or it isn't. I loved it.
Not much else I can say that other reviewers haven't said - it's either your cup of tea or it isn't. I loved it.
January 3, 2019
I grew up in the Open Brethren ... not the same group that this author writes about, but with some similarities.... so for that reason I found it interesting.
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