The Bellwether Revivals - Softcover

Benjamin Wood

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857206966 ISBN 13: 9780857206961

Publisher: Scribner UK, 2012

Synopsis

Bright, bookish Oscar Lowe has grown to love the quiet routine of his life as a care assistant at a Cambridge nursing home, until the fateful day when he is lured into King's College chapel by the otherworldly sound of an organ. There he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether and her privileged, eccentric clique, led by her brother Eden. A troubled but charismatic music prodigy, Eden convinces his sister and their friends to participate in a series of disturbing experiments. However, as the line between genius and madness begins to blur, Oscar fears that danger could await them all ...

About this title

Review:

'The Bellwether Revivals renders the cruelties and frailties of genius with acuity and tenderness, exploring the naive sophistication of bright young minds, the moral immunity granted to coteries of privilege, and the true nature of mastery in art. Seductive, resonant, and disquieting, Benjamin Wood's novel captures strains and cadences, qualities of music that are rarely rendered except in sound' --Eleanor Catton, author of The Luminaries, winner of the Man Booker Prize

'Oh, how I loved this novel! I was drawn in from the very first sentence and pretty much didn't put it down until I reached the last. This is the kind of story that makes you want to hole up under the covers-with a box of cookies and a mug of tea-and not come out until you've uncovered the mysteries at its heart. And those mysteries that stay with you long after you reluctantly emerge from bed. I find myself constantly thinking of Wood's characters - wonderful, surprising Oscar Lowe and those beautiful, doomed Bellwethers. It reminded me, more than anything, of Donna Tartt's The Secret History, another novel that utterly consumed me, body and soul' Joanna Smith Rakoff, author of the New York Times bestselling A Fortunate Age

'This thrilling campus drama begins with the death of Eden Bellwether, a magnetic music scholar and the leader of a Cambridge University clique of undergraduates. The story unravels backwards as Oscar, a working-call nurse and wide-eyed, Nick Carraway figure, if brought in as the outsider-witness after being befriended by another Bellwether - Eden's sister, Iris, and becoming embroiled in the group's sinister "experimentations." A heady, Costa-award shortlisted debut that hypnotises from the very start' Independent

'Read it. Quite a debut' Patrick Neate

'There's more than a hint of Donna Tartt's The Secret History about this novel... highly effective' Daily Mail

'Readers will find themselves transfixed' Independent

'Wood's confident, sometimes creepy novel draws you in... and then, once you're inside, holds on, ever tightening the grip' Independent on Sunday

Suffused with intelligence and integrity' --Guardian

About the Author:

Benjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in the north-west of England. He is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and the author of the highly acclaimed debut novel The Bellwether Revivals. His second novel is The Ecliptic.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner UK
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0857206966
• ISBN 13: 9780857206961
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 448