Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jun 2012
432 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
A sophisticated debut novel about a group of friends whose devotion to one among them leads to unimaginable consequences
An assistant at a nursing home, twenty-year-old Oscar Lowe has made a life for himself amid the colleges and spires of Cambridge and yet is a world apart from the privileged students who roam its grounds and study in the hallowed halls. By chance, he meets the wealthy, charismatic Bellwether siblings, Iris and Eden, after the otherworldly sounds of an organ entice him inside the chapel at King’s College.
Oscar falls in love with beautiful, quirky Iris, a medical student, and is drawn into her opulent world. He soon becomes entangled in the strange obsessions of her brilliant but emotionally troubled brother, Eden, who believes he can heal people with his music - and who will stop at nothing to prove himself right. Oscar and Iris devise a plan to determine just how dangerous Eden really is, but it might already be too late to keep him from his next treacherous move.
A masterful work of psychological suspense and emotional resonance sure to appeal to fans of Donna Tartt and Marisha Pessl, The Bellwether Revivals will hold readers spellbound until its breathtaking conclusion.
"Some readers will wish that Wood had written with more energy, but in building both Oscar's character and his story with restraint verging on the austere, he has created a highly engaging debut." - Publishers Weekly
"Wood moves the reader deftly through pastoral Cambridge, into the British upper crust, and ultimately into the mad mind of Eden himself." - Kirkus Reviews
"Well-drawn . . . richly imagined emotion ... Wood's confident, sometimes creepy debut novel draws you in - like the faintly heard strain from that hauntingly played pipe-organ - and then, once you're inside, holds on, ever tightening its grip." - The Independent (UK)
"The Bellwether Revivals is a stunningly good debut novel, a thrilling story of music and its hold on a group of young people's minds and lives. Benjamin Wood writes with vigor, precision and intensity, with a story that will keep readers up all night." - Steven Galloway, bestselling author of The Cellist of Sarajevo
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