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The Bellwether Revivals
Bright, bookish Oscar Lowe has made a life for himself amid the colleges and spires of Cambridge and yet is a world apart from the students who study in the hallowed halls. He has come to love the quiet routine of his job as a care assistant at a nursing home, where he has forged a close relationship with its most ill-tempered resident, Dr Paulsen.
But when Oscar is lured into the chapel at King’s College by the ethereal sound of an organ, he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether, a beautiful and enigmatic medical student. He follows her into a world of scholarship, wealth, and privilege, and soon becomes embroiled in the machinations of her older brother, Eden.
A charismatic but troubled musical prodigy, Eden persuades his sister and their close-knit circle of friends into a series of disturbing experiments. He believes that music — with his unique talent to guide it — has the power to cure, and will stop at nothing to prove himself right. As the line between genius and madness blurs, Oscar fears the danger that could await them all.
But when Oscar is lured into the chapel at King’s College by the ethereal sound of an organ, he meets and falls in love with Iris Bellwether, a beautiful and enigmatic medical student. He follows her into a world of scholarship, wealth, and privilege, and soon becomes embroiled in the machinations of her older brother, Eden.
A charismatic but troubled musical prodigy, Eden persuades his sister and their close-knit circle of friends into a series of disturbing experiments. He believes that music — with his unique talent to guide it — has the power to cure, and will stop at nothing to prove himself right. As the line between genius and madness blurs, Oscar fears the danger that could await them all.
432 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 2, 2012
167 people are currently reading
9065 people want to read
About the author
Benjamin Wood
17 books434 followersBenjamin Wood was born in 1981 and grew up in Merseyside. He is the author of five novels, the latest of which, SEASCRAPER, was longlisted for the Booker Prize 2025. His first book won France's Prix du Roman Fnac and Prix Baudelaire in 2014. His other works have been shortlisted for a number of awards, including the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year, the Costa First Novel Award, the CWA Gold Dagger Award, the European Union Prize for Literature, the Commonwealth Book Award, and the RSL Encore Award. He is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at King's College London, where he teaches fiction modules and founded the PhD in Creative Writing programme. He lives in Surrey with his wife and sons.
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March 10, 2019
how to make your own secret history playset.
you will need
one big house where a gaggle of college-aged and -attending young adults can gather unsupervised to drink and discuss Big Ideas and show off their highly specific knowledge in relatively obscure intellectual subjects
at least five of these should be very wealthy, having been protected by their wealth and their intellects their whole lives, giving them a false sense of immortality and infallibility; a confidence beyond their years that makes them seem larger than life. points if some are related to each other, points if some are sleeping with each other. points if they evince a disdain for their wealth and a casual, sloppy treatment of the things money provides.
one of them has to be incredibly charismatic, but also enigmatic, unpredictable, with some sociopathic tendencies
you will also need one "outsider" drawn into the circle, seemingly accepted as an equal, but who feels the class-disparity deeply and hungers for what the glittering people take for granted.
by the end of the game, there should be at least one dead body.
sound good?? i thought so!
i am on board with anything that does the secret history revamp thing. and although it is completely unfair, it is hard not to make comparisons in your head as you are reading them, holding them up against the gold standard. most are flimsy and bad, some are very good, and this one was right in the middle. i would give it a 3.5 star rating, if such a thing existed on the goodreads.
i am going to start with the things that didn't really work for me so that i can leave the review on a happy note, because this is a very solid debut and my feelings about it shouldn't deter anyone from reading it.
so, characters. you have oscar, the eldercare worker who gets sucked into this privileged circle when he hears an organ playing one night while walking by a church and is drawn in despite having no particular religious affiliation. once inside, he is enchanted by a beautiful, bored-looking girl and runs into her outside after the service where she is, naturally, reading a book by descartes. it turns out that it was her brother eden who was playing the organ and suddenly he finds himself in a cab with the girl, named iris, and eden himself, and on his way to a loud drunken party at their house, where he meets jane, who is eden's girlfriend, yin, and marcus; the remaining members of "the flock."
and i hate to make the comparison, because it's not really fair, but in the secret history, every single character was interesting, complex, shining. here, no one really has any specific personality. yin is chinese, marcus is german, and those are their defining characteristics. eden is by far the most defined character, but the problem is, he is all bombast and tics, without anything particularly original about him to make the reader understand why he so dominates the others.
an example, from when oscar meets iris:
When he asked for her name, she replied: "It's Iris. Like the genus." And he laughed - just a short vent of air from his nose, but enough for her to step back and say, "What's so funny?"
"Most people would say 'like the flower', that's all."
"Well, I'm not most people. I'm not going to say it's like the flower when I know perfectly well that it's a genus. And I'll tell you something else." She broke for a gulp of breath. "I know exactly which variety I am. Iris milifolia. The hardest one to look after."
which of course is studiously flirtatious and arch, but it shows a degree of self-confidence which is completely deflated when they all get in the cab together and she wilts under eden's condescension and bullying of her, while oscar says nothing.
and the point is that eden sucks the life out of everyone; brilliant and abusive as he is, and that scene shows the tendency he has to overpower people who are under his spell, but he just isn't interesting enough to be the only person in the room talking. yin and marcus are mostly unaffected by him; they are allowed to be goofy sidekicks, while jane shuts down, pretending to be dumber than she is and cracking self-deprecating jokes, and iris turns timid and careful, sparkless. so, not a great novel to find yourself in if you are a woman.
my other problem is with the ending. not the big, climactic scene; that was actually a spectacular episode with great tension and well-timed action, but the part of the ending that spotlights the foundation for this whole situation - the reveal in eden's bedroom. i think it is supposed to be a moment of dawning realization, but i just didn't get it. i didn't get the "how" of it. it relies on an astute judgment of character that i don't think eden has, and expectations that cannot be guaranteed; it relies too much on variables that are uncertain, and the timing of it - the fact that the predates the action here raises more questions than i think it answers.
but overall, it was a story that kept me interested and i never once wanted to stop reading it - it is the kind of book that carries you along, so when you are reading it, you don't feel the shortcomings; you are too wrapped up in the story. i just realized i haven't talked about the plot yet, because that is what publisher-supplied book synopses are for, but briefly, it is about someone so coddled and protected from the realities of life that he has developed a narcissistic personality that gets out of hand when he believes he has the power to heal people through music-based-hypnosis.
which makes for a pretty awesome story, and my quibbles should not be taken as a sign that i didn't like the book, because it was very enjoyable.
some of the best decisions were about what to exclude. as frustrating as it is, for a reader, to not be privy to the conversations between crest and eden, and to not get to see crest's manuscript in the form he had intended, i think it was a really smart move on the part of the author. i like the not-knowing, i like the lingering mystery and the wanting to so badly eavesdrop but being DENIED.
also, both crest and dr paulsen were incredibly intriguing characters . i would have liked to have learned more about them and their relationship, because their characters were by far the most interesting, but - again - i appreciate the understated mystique..
overall, a very solid and better-than-most addition to the books claiming to be just like secret history shelf
as a fun drinking game, do a shot every time the word "wisteria" is used.
come to my blog!
you will need
one big house where a gaggle of college-aged and -attending young adults can gather unsupervised to drink and discuss Big Ideas and show off their highly specific knowledge in relatively obscure intellectual subjects
at least five of these should be very wealthy, having been protected by their wealth and their intellects their whole lives, giving them a false sense of immortality and infallibility; a confidence beyond their years that makes them seem larger than life. points if some are related to each other, points if some are sleeping with each other. points if they evince a disdain for their wealth and a casual, sloppy treatment of the things money provides.
one of them has to be incredibly charismatic, but also enigmatic, unpredictable, with some sociopathic tendencies
you will also need one "outsider" drawn into the circle, seemingly accepted as an equal, but who feels the class-disparity deeply and hungers for what the glittering people take for granted.
by the end of the game, there should be at least one dead body.
sound good?? i thought so!
i am on board with anything that does the secret history revamp thing. and although it is completely unfair, it is hard not to make comparisons in your head as you are reading them, holding them up against the gold standard. most are flimsy and bad, some are very good, and this one was right in the middle. i would give it a 3.5 star rating, if such a thing existed on the goodreads.
i am going to start with the things that didn't really work for me so that i can leave the review on a happy note, because this is a very solid debut and my feelings about it shouldn't deter anyone from reading it.
so, characters. you have oscar, the eldercare worker who gets sucked into this privileged circle when he hears an organ playing one night while walking by a church and is drawn in despite having no particular religious affiliation. once inside, he is enchanted by a beautiful, bored-looking girl and runs into her outside after the service where she is, naturally, reading a book by descartes. it turns out that it was her brother eden who was playing the organ and suddenly he finds himself in a cab with the girl, named iris, and eden himself, and on his way to a loud drunken party at their house, where he meets jane, who is eden's girlfriend, yin, and marcus; the remaining members of "the flock."
and i hate to make the comparison, because it's not really fair, but in the secret history, every single character was interesting, complex, shining. here, no one really has any specific personality. yin is chinese, marcus is german, and those are their defining characteristics. eden is by far the most defined character, but the problem is, he is all bombast and tics, without anything particularly original about him to make the reader understand why he so dominates the others.
an example, from when oscar meets iris:
When he asked for her name, she replied: "It's Iris. Like the genus." And he laughed - just a short vent of air from his nose, but enough for her to step back and say, "What's so funny?"
"Most people would say 'like the flower', that's all."
"Well, I'm not most people. I'm not going to say it's like the flower when I know perfectly well that it's a genus. And I'll tell you something else." She broke for a gulp of breath. "I know exactly which variety I am. Iris milifolia. The hardest one to look after."
which of course is studiously flirtatious and arch, but it shows a degree of self-confidence which is completely deflated when they all get in the cab together and she wilts under eden's condescension and bullying of her, while oscar says nothing.
and the point is that eden sucks the life out of everyone; brilliant and abusive as he is, and that scene shows the tendency he has to overpower people who are under his spell, but he just isn't interesting enough to be the only person in the room talking. yin and marcus are mostly unaffected by him; they are allowed to be goofy sidekicks, while jane shuts down, pretending to be dumber than she is and cracking self-deprecating jokes, and iris turns timid and careful, sparkless. so, not a great novel to find yourself in if you are a woman.
my other problem is with the ending. not the big, climactic scene; that was actually a spectacular episode with great tension and well-timed action, but the part of the ending that spotlights the foundation for this whole situation - the reveal in eden's bedroom. i think it is supposed to be a moment of dawning realization, but i just didn't get it. i didn't get the "how" of it. it relies on an astute judgment of character that i don't think eden has, and expectations that cannot be guaranteed; it relies too much on variables that are uncertain, and the timing of it - the fact that the predates the action here raises more questions than i think it answers.
but overall, it was a story that kept me interested and i never once wanted to stop reading it - it is the kind of book that carries you along, so when you are reading it, you don't feel the shortcomings; you are too wrapped up in the story. i just realized i haven't talked about the plot yet, because that is what publisher-supplied book synopses are for, but briefly, it is about someone so coddled and protected from the realities of life that he has developed a narcissistic personality that gets out of hand when he believes he has the power to heal people through music-based-hypnosis.
which makes for a pretty awesome story, and my quibbles should not be taken as a sign that i didn't like the book, because it was very enjoyable.
some of the best decisions were about what to exclude. as frustrating as it is, for a reader, to not be privy to the conversations between crest and eden, and to not get to see crest's manuscript in the form he had intended, i think it was a really smart move on the part of the author. i like the not-knowing, i like the lingering mystery and the wanting to so badly eavesdrop but being DENIED.
also, both crest and dr paulsen were incredibly intriguing characters . i would have liked to have learned more about them and their relationship, because their characters were by far the most interesting, but - again - i appreciate the understated mystique..
overall, a very solid and better-than-most addition to the books claiming to be just like secret history shelf
as a fun drinking game, do a shot every time the word "wisteria" is used.
come to my blog!
January 21, 2012
I was drawn to this like a moth to the light – I can’t resist novels set in academic environments with quirky, over-privileged characters who I’d be tempted to throttle in real life. It’s always a bonus if this elite group assimilates someone from a lower class, hoping to mould him in their own image. Brideshead Revisited and The Secret History rank amongst my all-time favourite reads so The Bellwether Revivals should be a shoo-in….but is it strong enough to forge its own path or is it just a readable homage?
I’m delighted to report that The Bellwether Revivals is a very distinctive, debut novel with its own identity and power. Oscar Lowe, a young Care Assistant, finds himself drawn into another world when he meets and becomes romantically involved with Iris Bellwether, an undergraduate at Cambridge. It is the hypnotic organ playing of Iris’s enigmatic brother Eden which draws Oscar into a church and acts as the catalyst for a series of disturbing events.
The characterisation is superb – you feel like you’re right beside Oscar, meeting Eden for the first time, being magnetically drawn to this rangy, curly haired, eccentric/mad creature who thinks he can heal via the medium of music. Eden’s friends and family feel compelled to protect him but is he merely a tad idiosyncratic or a real danger to himself and others? Iris is torn between loyalty to her brother and her burgeoning romance with Oscar. Mater and Pater live in splendid isolation, with only a vague interest in their children, as long as their grades are good.
From the very first page I was drawn into the compelling and, at times, unnerving world of the Bellwethers. The opening will hook you as we begin with an ending and you really have to find out how we get there. An excellent debut novel which will appeal to fans of Brideshead, The Secret History and The Lessons by Naomi Alderman. I can’t wait to see what this talented author comes out with next.
My thanks to Net Galley for sending me this ARC.
I’m delighted to report that The Bellwether Revivals is a very distinctive, debut novel with its own identity and power. Oscar Lowe, a young Care Assistant, finds himself drawn into another world when he meets and becomes romantically involved with Iris Bellwether, an undergraduate at Cambridge. It is the hypnotic organ playing of Iris’s enigmatic brother Eden which draws Oscar into a church and acts as the catalyst for a series of disturbing events.
The characterisation is superb – you feel like you’re right beside Oscar, meeting Eden for the first time, being magnetically drawn to this rangy, curly haired, eccentric/mad creature who thinks he can heal via the medium of music. Eden’s friends and family feel compelled to protect him but is he merely a tad idiosyncratic or a real danger to himself and others? Iris is torn between loyalty to her brother and her burgeoning romance with Oscar. Mater and Pater live in splendid isolation, with only a vague interest in their children, as long as their grades are good.
From the very first page I was drawn into the compelling and, at times, unnerving world of the Bellwethers. The opening will hook you as we begin with an ending and you really have to find out how we get there. An excellent debut novel which will appeal to fans of Brideshead, The Secret History and The Lessons by Naomi Alderman. I can’t wait to see what this talented author comes out with next.
My thanks to Net Galley for sending me this ARC.
February 1, 2025
I'm a simple girl to please; give me a book where a group of five or six people (four's a double date and seven's a crowd, so that's out of the question) talk to death about some very niche but damn pretentious academic topic while getting high as a kite and sleeping with each other, and there's murder at the end that you get told about in the beginning, and I'll give you my heart, no questions asked.
For someone without a college degree (I'm still in high school), I sure do love those college talks.
On a scale from "This is The Secret History Reincarnated" to "Wow, The Author Really Likes It Vague", this one veers towards the former, with a group of highly privileged Cambridge students with a maniacal genius as their leader, and an outsider "everyman" as our narrator, as a conduit to their world. Oscar is a young caretaker at a hospice who, one day, gets enchanted by the melody of organ music coming from a church, and subsequently meets the beautiful and enigmatic college student Iris inside. There is a bit of love at first sight, and as the boyfriend of Iris, Oscar gets invited into the close-knit circle of their friends, with Eden's demure girlfriend Jane, Chinese Canadian Yin, German Marcus, and, of course, the highly misanthropic yet alluring Eden, the organ player, and Iris' brother.
I must admit, Benjamin Wood didn't just give us a maniacal genius as the leader of the group, he went one step further and turned Eden into a cult guru in making who goes totally bananas by the end. The central point of the novel is Eden's obsession with music, and his deep belief that music can cure just about any disease: fractured bones, terminal tumours, stabbed hands, you name it. The rest of the group are forced to accept his hypothesis when it actually starts to work, and Eden decides to cure a much-celebrated psychiatrist from brain cancer, who also happens to be the last hope of Iris for treating her sibling's troubling narcissism.
What I loved the most about this novel was the subject matter. You have to give credit to the author for coming up with a plot as ludicrous as this. Eden's obsessive research was well fleshed out, meaning I didn't have to do too much Google work to be able to take things into my brain. Benjamin Wood's writing is apt for a novel of this calibre, and Oscar Lowe, though not equal to mon amour Richard Papen, was adequate as a narrator. Now that I call him a narrator, the book isn't actually narrated by Oscar, but told from his perspective. An interesting choice for a wannabe The Secret History book, if you ask me.
Where the book didn't work, unfortunately, was giving the rest of the cast of characters three dimensions; Eden takes up the entirety of the book, leaving very little space for others. Jane and Iris could've been written in a better way, and Marcus and Yin were simply there to amp up the numbers; they didn't add anything to the table. Similarly, the relationship between Oscar and Iris—a pivotal point, no doubt—wasn't that credible. I loved Eden's unhinged charisma—such an oxymoron, I know—but that too, unfortunately, wasn't enough to make its mark among the plethora of The Secret History Retellings.
Three point five stars, rounded down.
TL;DR:- The Secret History, but make it British and Henry an apeshit crazy music lover this time.
For someone without a college degree (I'm still in high school), I sure do love those college talks.
On a scale from "This is The Secret History Reincarnated" to "Wow, The Author Really Likes It Vague", this one veers towards the former, with a group of highly privileged Cambridge students with a maniacal genius as their leader, and an outsider "everyman" as our narrator, as a conduit to their world. Oscar is a young caretaker at a hospice who, one day, gets enchanted by the melody of organ music coming from a church, and subsequently meets the beautiful and enigmatic college student Iris inside. There is a bit of love at first sight, and as the boyfriend of Iris, Oscar gets invited into the close-knit circle of their friends, with Eden's demure girlfriend Jane, Chinese Canadian Yin, German Marcus, and, of course, the highly misanthropic yet alluring Eden, the organ player, and Iris' brother.
I must admit, Benjamin Wood didn't just give us a maniacal genius as the leader of the group, he went one step further and turned Eden into a cult guru in making who goes totally bananas by the end. The central point of the novel is Eden's obsession with music, and his deep belief that music can cure just about any disease: fractured bones, terminal tumours, stabbed hands, you name it. The rest of the group are forced to accept his hypothesis when it actually starts to work, and Eden decides to cure a much-celebrated psychiatrist from brain cancer, who also happens to be the last hope of Iris for treating her sibling's troubling narcissism.
What I loved the most about this novel was the subject matter. You have to give credit to the author for coming up with a plot as ludicrous as this. Eden's obsessive research was well fleshed out, meaning I didn't have to do too much Google work to be able to take things into my brain. Benjamin Wood's writing is apt for a novel of this calibre, and Oscar Lowe, though not equal to mon amour Richard Papen, was adequate as a narrator. Now that I call him a narrator, the book isn't actually narrated by Oscar, but told from his perspective. An interesting choice for a wannabe The Secret History book, if you ask me.
Where the book didn't work, unfortunately, was giving the rest of the cast of characters three dimensions; Eden takes up the entirety of the book, leaving very little space for others. Jane and Iris could've been written in a better way, and Marcus and Yin were simply there to amp up the numbers; they didn't add anything to the table. Similarly, the relationship between Oscar and Iris—a pivotal point, no doubt—wasn't that credible. I loved Eden's unhinged charisma—such an oxymoron, I know—but that too, unfortunately, wasn't enough to make its mark among the plethora of The Secret History Retellings.
Three point five stars, rounded down.
TL;DR:- The Secret History, but make it British and Henry an apeshit crazy music lover this time.
June 2, 2018
Wonderful book to read.
August 17, 2012
So I'm on page 200 of this book(right around halfway through), and I'm not sure I can force myself to finish it. I've sort of been skimming already. The beginning intrigued me. The book basically starts at the end of the story -- with bodies being carted away from a mansion, then goes back in time and tells the story of how they ended up there. This technique made me desperately want to find out what happens to get there. However, there's little else in this book that pulls me in, and so I'm left feeling annoyed at the beginning as gimmicky. I sort of think it's cheating to rely on a gimmick to draw your reader through the story rather than really solid storytelling in general. First off, the characters are both utterly unbelievable AND not all that interesting or relatable. The main character, Oscar, is supposed to be so in love with Iris that we buy into the fairly dumb decisions he makes in the face of her completely wackadoo family. Yet Iris is a total blank slate. I can't picture her in my head, nor do I have any sense of what in her personality could possibly make someone fall so head over heels for her. Ultimately, I think I'm going to skim to the end of this one. I just don't think it's worth much more of my time.
July 9, 2015
How to make me really, really want to read a book: describe it, as the blurb for The Bellwether Revivals does, as 'part The Secret History, part Brideshead Revisited for the 21st century... a page-turning, romantic, eerie tale of genius and, possibly, madness'. Of course, I wanted to get my hands on this straight away and saw it as a natural addition to my famous (ahem...) Secret-History-esque shelf.
First things first: let's do the checklist. Elite, academic setting? Yes - Cambridge University and its surroundings. 'Outsider' protagonist? Yes - Oscar Lowe, a care assistant at an old people's home, whose poor background has denied him the privilege of higher education. Close-knit group of friends who believe themselves to be superior to others, yet accept our hero into the fold? Yes - Eden, Iris, Jane, Marcus and Yin, all students at King's College. Charismatic and eccentric 'leader'? Yes - the fiercely intelligent but highly narcissistic Eden Bellwether, who is convinced he can heal the sick through the use of particular pieces of music and his own enigmatic 'powers'.
The story follows Oscar's induction into the Bellwethers' 'flock'; drawn into a chapel by Eden's organ-playing, he meets Iris - Eden's beautiful sister - and immediately begins to fall for her. Fascinated by the siblings' intellectual clique and flattered by their attention, he agrees to participate in an experiment to test Eden's beliefs about music and hypnosis. However, Oscar soon discovers that Eden's unconventional views are even more strange than they appear: he actually believes he is capable of healing injuries and even serious long-term conditions, a delusion that is causing Iris to fear he is mentally ill. Iris enlists Oscar's assistance in persuading the headstrong Eden that he needs help, a mission that comes to involve Herbert Crest, a psychologist and expert in narcissistic personality disorder - who also happens to be slowly dying from a brain tumour, which Eden hopes to cure.
There is something very intriguing and genuinely different about this novel, an undercurrent of constant strangeness. While there's never any doubt that Oscar himself is a sceptic, all the evidence appears to imply that Eden's mystical powers might truly exist, and as such the reader is kept guessing for much of the story. This mystery is cleverly woven into the sort of coming-of-age plot that will appeal to all lovers of campus novels and tales of supposed intellectual elites. Personally, though, I would really have preferred it if the book had been written in first person from Oscar's point of view. The narrative never deviates from Oscar's perspective, we know all his thoughts and feelings, and the other characters are just as mysterious to us as they are to him... so why not simply have Oscar telling the story? I really think the narrative would have been much stronger for it. I liked Oscar well enough, but I didn't feel emotionally connected with him, and didn't get a proper sense of his love for Iris at all - I know this was supposed to be a great romance, but I just couldn't identify any true passion between them. As a result, I also felt the climax and conclusion of the book were somewhat muted, and I couldn't fully feel the impact of . That said, I did really like the final revelation that - I just think the reveal could have been so much more dramatic and shocking.
This is one of the better Secret History pastiches (if I may call it that without sounding too insulting!) I've come across. It's intelligent and interesting, but in the end it failed to be captivating enough to live up to my expectations - which, to be fair to the book, were very high. I wish I could say I'd really cared about the characters, but the truth is I was rather ambivalent about most of them and, writing this review a while after I actually finished reading, I don't feel that much about the story was memorable, other than the romantic setting. My overall feeling is that The Bellwether Revivals is an ambitious premise that doesn't quite succeed; but if this type of story is your thing, as it is mine, then it's certainly worth your time.
First things first: let's do the checklist. Elite, academic setting? Yes - Cambridge University and its surroundings. 'Outsider' protagonist? Yes - Oscar Lowe, a care assistant at an old people's home, whose poor background has denied him the privilege of higher education. Close-knit group of friends who believe themselves to be superior to others, yet accept our hero into the fold? Yes - Eden, Iris, Jane, Marcus and Yin, all students at King's College. Charismatic and eccentric 'leader'? Yes - the fiercely intelligent but highly narcissistic Eden Bellwether, who is convinced he can heal the sick through the use of particular pieces of music and his own enigmatic 'powers'.
The story follows Oscar's induction into the Bellwethers' 'flock'; drawn into a chapel by Eden's organ-playing, he meets Iris - Eden's beautiful sister - and immediately begins to fall for her. Fascinated by the siblings' intellectual clique and flattered by their attention, he agrees to participate in an experiment to test Eden's beliefs about music and hypnosis. However, Oscar soon discovers that Eden's unconventional views are even more strange than they appear: he actually believes he is capable of healing injuries and even serious long-term conditions, a delusion that is causing Iris to fear he is mentally ill. Iris enlists Oscar's assistance in persuading the headstrong Eden that he needs help, a mission that comes to involve Herbert Crest, a psychologist and expert in narcissistic personality disorder - who also happens to be slowly dying from a brain tumour, which Eden hopes to cure.
There is something very intriguing and genuinely different about this novel, an undercurrent of constant strangeness. While there's never any doubt that Oscar himself is a sceptic, all the evidence appears to imply that Eden's mystical powers might truly exist, and as such the reader is kept guessing for much of the story. This mystery is cleverly woven into the sort of coming-of-age plot that will appeal to all lovers of campus novels and tales of supposed intellectual elites. Personally, though, I would really have preferred it if the book had been written in first person from Oscar's point of view. The narrative never deviates from Oscar's perspective, we know all his thoughts and feelings, and the other characters are just as mysterious to us as they are to him... so why not simply have Oscar telling the story? I really think the narrative would have been much stronger for it. I liked Oscar well enough, but I didn't feel emotionally connected with him, and didn't get a proper sense of his love for Iris at all - I know this was supposed to be a great romance, but I just couldn't identify any true passion between them. As a result, I also felt the climax and conclusion of the book were somewhat muted, and I couldn't fully feel the impact of . That said, I did really like the final revelation that - I just think the reveal could have been so much more dramatic and shocking.
This is one of the better Secret History pastiches (if I may call it that without sounding too insulting!) I've come across. It's intelligent and interesting, but in the end it failed to be captivating enough to live up to my expectations - which, to be fair to the book, were very high. I wish I could say I'd really cared about the characters, but the truth is I was rather ambivalent about most of them and, writing this review a while after I actually finished reading, I don't feel that much about the story was memorable, other than the romantic setting. My overall feeling is that The Bellwether Revivals is an ambitious premise that doesn't quite succeed; but if this type of story is your thing, as it is mine, then it's certainly worth your time.
April 22, 2012
"There is a thin line between madness and genius". I don't remember you said this but it could well be the theme for this first novel by Benjamin Wood. The prologue, introduces the reader to the ending, this could be risky but for me it served as a catalyst to want to keep reading just to find out how and why. It also sets the tone of apprehension for the rest of the novel. Oscar, lives in a bedsit and works as a care aide in a senior center, and when he meets Iris Bellwether he knows he wants to have her in his life. Unfortunately, her brother and a few friends come along as part of the package, but it is the brother that the story focuses on. A musical genius who is convinced that he can heal with music and the power that music gives him. I have never read anything quite like this novel, it is literary fiction and also psychological suspense, and it is exceedingly well done. The flow of the story is flawless, the Bellwether family for the most part in denial about the madness of their son, leaving only Oscar to question the sanity of Eden. Things quickly spiral out of control and those that are left attempt to pick up the pieces of their lives and continue on. Alternately strange and brilliant, this is definitely one of the most original pieces of fiction I have read this year. ARC by NetGalley.
November 23, 2012
My first review! The Bellwether Revivals. Plot outine, Oscar the care worker meets Iris, but her brother is a genius and may be unhinged, there will be bodies by the end of the book.
The main problem with this book is that the author keeps telling us how intelligent his characters are, but they say such daft things. For instance, Eden (the so-called genius) thinks that Cartesian dualism is not without its flaws. This just made me laugh. A pretty big understatement (Descartes substance dualism is no longer seen as credible, the only dualists left are property dualists), which suggests he has no idea what he is talking about. I'd been waiting and waiting to be convinced of the intelligence of these people, and this is the best that the author could come up with? The main problem is not that the characters make statements which I personally disagree with. It's that if they are as intelligent as they are made out to be, they ought to be able to hold intelligent discussions. I've heard more intelligent debates on Sunday morning TV.
Here is another example, Iris (another of those supposedly intelligent characters) claims that we need to be open-minded to ideas we think are preposterous e.g. God, because he might exist after all. I just think there is an obvious response to this, because if we should never rule anything out because it is preposterou,s we should not rule out the existance of santa claus (along with all those other things like the spagetti monster and the chocolate teapot orbiting Jupiter).
Which leads me to my next point, although the author claims that some of his female characters are intelligent too, he doesn't seem too commited to the idea. You can see this in the reply of a male character to Iris's argument, he basically gives up on trying to put his point across, instead he just says 'there's just no way I'd be able to keep up with you, honey.' Honey? I don't know which bit of this is most patronising. Another female character is supposedly intelligent, but prefers to pretend not to be. Why? Because she likes to keep the peace. The author tells us this, but he needs to show us with dialogue.
Near the end of the book, an expert witness claims that music cannot cure a brain tumour. What does the judge do? Asks the jury to ignore this piece of evidence. What??? And why was a neurosurgeon being asked to give evidence? Surely a psychiatrist would have been a better person to explain Eden's condition. Let the poor neurosurgeon get back to performing operations I say.
I guess it might not matter too much if the book worked on the level of a psychological thriller. But it didn't. For me the characters didn't really come alive. Many of them seemed two-dimensional and not particularly likeable. I couldn't trust Iris and wasn't sure what Oscar saw in her or her friends. I was expecting some clever plot twists and turns, but in the end it just came down to, Eden is crazy and kills some people.
I thought it was a great shame because the book occasionally touched on some interesting ideas and if the author had done some research and book would have been much better. Other reviewers have pointed out this lack of research too (apparently the author was not familiar with Cambridge). In a way it's not even his fault, someone should have advised him, it was his first novel after all.
The main problem with this book is that the author keeps telling us how intelligent his characters are, but they say such daft things. For instance, Eden (the so-called genius) thinks that Cartesian dualism is not without its flaws. This just made me laugh. A pretty big understatement (Descartes substance dualism is no longer seen as credible, the only dualists left are property dualists), which suggests he has no idea what he is talking about. I'd been waiting and waiting to be convinced of the intelligence of these people, and this is the best that the author could come up with? The main problem is not that the characters make statements which I personally disagree with. It's that if they are as intelligent as they are made out to be, they ought to be able to hold intelligent discussions. I've heard more intelligent debates on Sunday morning TV.
Here is another example, Iris (another of those supposedly intelligent characters) claims that we need to be open-minded to ideas we think are preposterous e.g. God, because he might exist after all. I just think there is an obvious response to this, because if we should never rule anything out because it is preposterou,s we should not rule out the existance of santa claus (along with all those other things like the spagetti monster and the chocolate teapot orbiting Jupiter).
Which leads me to my next point, although the author claims that some of his female characters are intelligent too, he doesn't seem too commited to the idea. You can see this in the reply of a male character to Iris's argument, he basically gives up on trying to put his point across, instead he just says 'there's just no way I'd be able to keep up with you, honey.' Honey? I don't know which bit of this is most patronising. Another female character is supposedly intelligent, but prefers to pretend not to be. Why? Because she likes to keep the peace. The author tells us this, but he needs to show us with dialogue.
Near the end of the book, an expert witness claims that music cannot cure a brain tumour. What does the judge do? Asks the jury to ignore this piece of evidence. What??? And why was a neurosurgeon being asked to give evidence? Surely a psychiatrist would have been a better person to explain Eden's condition. Let the poor neurosurgeon get back to performing operations I say.
I guess it might not matter too much if the book worked on the level of a psychological thriller. But it didn't. For me the characters didn't really come alive. Many of them seemed two-dimensional and not particularly likeable. I couldn't trust Iris and wasn't sure what Oscar saw in her or her friends. I was expecting some clever plot twists and turns, but in the end it just came down to, Eden is crazy and kills some people.
I thought it was a great shame because the book occasionally touched on some interesting ideas and if the author had done some research and book would have been much better. Other reviewers have pointed out this lack of research too (apparently the author was not familiar with Cambridge). In a way it's not even his fault, someone should have advised him, it was his first novel after all.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 5, 2012
This book is really about 4.33 stars, with just a few little things keeping it from 5 stars in my view.
The story is intense. The book starts with three bodies, and then jumps you into the story a year or so earlier to explain how they got to that point. By the time I got back to that point, I'd forgotten the bodies in the beginning, and it was horrifying all over again.
The Bellwethers are a family living in Cambridge, where their children are college-aged. Eden, the oldest, is the organist at King's College, but possesses some strange beliefs about himself and the power of music. His beliefs are largely based on the writings of an obscure Baroque composer, Johann Mattheson, who the reader is introduced to very early on, as Eden is completely obsessed with him.
Iris Bellwether is studying medicine because her father wants her to. One night she catches Oscar, the protagonist, listening to the organ at King's College, and pulls him into her life. Oscar is a much lower class than the Bellwethers, and works at a nursing home.
There were a few moments where I was caught off guard. The novel is not obviously modern, until you consider the history of psychoanalysis and the time they would have to be in to know what they know. I hadn't really thought about it until someone mentions getting an e-mail address, and I was completely taken out of the story for a while, having to re-frame everything. Maybe it is because I've listened to The Talented Mr. Ripley too recently, but I had the Bellwethers in that same era. Regardless, they are old-money, private-school, coddled characters, which I suppose can happen in any era. Eden is eccentric; Iris is aloof, and Oscar is left trying to find his way through the situations.
The added layer of the nursing home was interesting, and grounding. The importance of music drew me in the most, and I felt I learned a lot that I didn't know about historical musical aesthetics. The author has a nice list of books for further reference in the back, which makes me believe this is a well-researched novel. I also learned the word petrichor; look it up and you will be as impressed by the English language as Iris was.
"Mattheson took Descartes's ideas and applied them to music. In Capellmeister, he basically lays down a set of instructions for composers, to show them how to induce certain emotions through their work - to achieve that empire over the passions Descartes was talking about."
"I look at my son and I think, have I raised someone exceptional or someone abnormal?"
The story is intense. The book starts with three bodies, and then jumps you into the story a year or so earlier to explain how they got to that point. By the time I got back to that point, I'd forgotten the bodies in the beginning, and it was horrifying all over again.
The Bellwethers are a family living in Cambridge, where their children are college-aged. Eden, the oldest, is the organist at King's College, but possesses some strange beliefs about himself and the power of music. His beliefs are largely based on the writings of an obscure Baroque composer, Johann Mattheson, who the reader is introduced to very early on, as Eden is completely obsessed with him.
Iris Bellwether is studying medicine because her father wants her to. One night she catches Oscar, the protagonist, listening to the organ at King's College, and pulls him into her life. Oscar is a much lower class than the Bellwethers, and works at a nursing home.
There were a few moments where I was caught off guard. The novel is not obviously modern, until you consider the history of psychoanalysis and the time they would have to be in to know what they know. I hadn't really thought about it until someone mentions getting an e-mail address, and I was completely taken out of the story for a while, having to re-frame everything. Maybe it is because I've listened to The Talented Mr. Ripley too recently, but I had the Bellwethers in that same era. Regardless, they are old-money, private-school, coddled characters, which I suppose can happen in any era. Eden is eccentric; Iris is aloof, and Oscar is left trying to find his way through the situations.
The added layer of the nursing home was interesting, and grounding. The importance of music drew me in the most, and I felt I learned a lot that I didn't know about historical musical aesthetics. The author has a nice list of books for further reference in the back, which makes me believe this is a well-researched novel. I also learned the word petrichor; look it up and you will be as impressed by the English language as Iris was.
"Mattheson took Descartes's ideas and applied them to music. In Capellmeister, he basically lays down a set of instructions for composers, to show them how to induce certain emotions through their work - to achieve that empire over the passions Descartes was talking about."
"I look at my son and I think, have I raised someone exceptional or someone abnormal?"
February 11, 2013
The premise of this story is very interesting and this could have been a really engaging novel, however there is a glaring lack of consistency, an overall unevenness to the quality of the story, as well as the writing. The whole story has a very forced feeling, the progression of relationships, the way the characters related to one another, the dialogue, the timing of events, it all felt very contrived.
The pacing is uneven and the character development is out of order, passages offering insight to the basic character of the female protagonist are found in the middle of the book rather than the beginning where it would have been more helpful and engaging for the reader. There is also a conflict this character struggles with that is dealt with inconsistently. She and her boyfriend argue about it, it's an underlying source of friction in their relationship and then it's forgotten and doesn't come up again.
The male protagonist is inserted into an existing group of friends but there is never any mention of the friends he had before he met them. The way he's characterized he would have had a large circle of friends and acquaintances in his life that he would have been connected to. It was just another thing that was inconsistent and unrealistically depicted.
All of the key events have a forced and contrived feeling to them. The relationships are strange and unnatural, the way the group of friends conduct themselves while visiting the Bellwethers' home is odd. There are referenced that don't make sense, for example one character wonders how the group all learned to play so well but they are not playing they are singing. There is also a mention that someone is the only good thing to come out of "all of this" but the person being referred to came before "all of this" happened.
I made four pages of notes on the specifics of what didn't sit well with me in this story, I don't want to include spoilers for potential readers so I will be vague but there is an event that happens at the end of the book and not one character acts in a natural or believable way. I do have to include just one specific example though; there is a different situation later on that requires someone to call for emergency assistance and the character who says they will do so goes into a house to find a phone. The story is set in 2006 and the primary characters are wealthy young college students, cell phones are mentioned in the story and the fact that none of them have a cell phone on them at this particular moment is just one more example of the lack of realism to the story. The fact that they have to go inside to find a phone doesn't add anything to the story itself.
This is another book that I offered up for a book club choice to read this month and another one I'm greatly relieved we didn't choose.
The pacing is uneven and the character development is out of order, passages offering insight to the basic character of the female protagonist are found in the middle of the book rather than the beginning where it would have been more helpful and engaging for the reader. There is also a conflict this character struggles with that is dealt with inconsistently. She and her boyfriend argue about it, it's an underlying source of friction in their relationship and then it's forgotten and doesn't come up again.
The male protagonist is inserted into an existing group of friends but there is never any mention of the friends he had before he met them. The way he's characterized he would have had a large circle of friends and acquaintances in his life that he would have been connected to. It was just another thing that was inconsistent and unrealistically depicted.
All of the key events have a forced and contrived feeling to them. The relationships are strange and unnatural, the way the group of friends conduct themselves while visiting the Bellwethers' home is odd. There are referenced that don't make sense, for example one character wonders how the group all learned to play so well but they are not playing they are singing. There is also a mention that someone is the only good thing to come out of "all of this" but the person being referred to came before "all of this" happened.
I made four pages of notes on the specifics of what didn't sit well with me in this story, I don't want to include spoilers for potential readers so I will be vague but there is an event that happens at the end of the book and not one character acts in a natural or believable way. I do have to include just one specific example though; there is a different situation later on that requires someone to call for emergency assistance and the character who says they will do so goes into a house to find a phone. The story is set in 2006 and the primary characters are wealthy young college students, cell phones are mentioned in the story and the fact that none of them have a cell phone on them at this particular moment is just one more example of the lack of realism to the story. The fact that they have to go inside to find a phone doesn't add anything to the story itself.
This is another book that I offered up for a book club choice to read this month and another one I'm greatly relieved we didn't choose.
May 31, 2018
Actual rating: 1.5
A few things:
The writing was good for a first novel, although, it was pretty stale more than it was enticing.
The whole book, Oscar comes off as a bland, lovesick mush; he was cloyingly puppy-eyed whenever speaking of Iris, and it was tedious. The book would have been much better off without the romance aspect.
Eden was aloof for a majority of the story, and felt utterly displaced to me. More time should have been spent developing his persona from first-hand encounters, and yet, the for most of the book all we got was second-hand accounts of his actions and psyche. There could have been more depth to his character, a stronger examination— and for all of the characters, in fact! Where Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History held such rich characterization, Wood’s book only scratched the surface (with the brush of a feather). I can’t even picture any of them in my head, that’s how wooden they were.
Also, there was such a heavy-handed foreshadowing the last 1/3rd of the book, too, that any actual surprise from the beginning was irrelevant. Opening the story with a set of bodies (and not knowing who— though, it’s easy to guess fairly early on), and then going back months and months before the event... is such a half-assed gimmick. I honestly didn’t care enough about any of them to warrant the emotions involved in trying to figure out who’d die.
In any case, I was liking the book at the start, but quickly that turned into me trudging on just to get it over with. The flatness to all the characters, eventually, was the final nail in the coffin. It really did ruin it for me.
A few things:
The writing was good for a first novel, although, it was pretty stale more than it was enticing.
The whole book, Oscar comes off as a bland, lovesick mush; he was cloyingly puppy-eyed whenever speaking of Iris, and it was tedious. The book would have been much better off without the romance aspect.
Eden was aloof for a majority of the story, and felt utterly displaced to me. More time should have been spent developing his persona from first-hand encounters, and yet, the for most of the book all we got was second-hand accounts of his actions and psyche. There could have been more depth to his character, a stronger examination— and for all of the characters, in fact! Where Donna Tartt’s novel The Secret History held such rich characterization, Wood’s book only scratched the surface (with the brush of a feather). I can’t even picture any of them in my head, that’s how wooden they were.
Also, there was such a heavy-handed foreshadowing the last 1/3rd of the book, too, that any actual surprise from the beginning was irrelevant. Opening the story with a set of bodies (and not knowing who— though, it’s easy to guess fairly early on), and then going back months and months before the event... is such a half-assed gimmick. I honestly didn’t care enough about any of them to warrant the emotions involved in trying to figure out who’d die.
In any case, I was liking the book at the start, but quickly that turned into me trudging on just to get it over with. The flatness to all the characters, eventually, was the final nail in the coffin. It really did ruin it for me.
December 24, 2016
This seemed to me very much a "promising first novel"—very nicely written at points, but overly dependent on its models (most obviously The Secret History; Brideshead Revisited; and The Great Gatsby.) The narrative also seemed rather thin as a vehicle for the "ideas" it is transparently servicing; and there are even slight technical flaws, in the handling of focalization, for example.
The novel worked reasonably well for me as a page turner (though my partner abandoned it half way through, so that's clearly not universal); and I found some entirely parochial pleasure in the fact that its geography mapped exactly onto mine (Harvey Road! Cartwright Gardens!)
I think anyone wanting to sample this very talented young writer, though, might be best advised to skip this first one and to go straight onto Wood's second novel The Ecliptic, a far more assured and original work.
The novel worked reasonably well for me as a page turner (though my partner abandoned it half way through, so that's clearly not universal); and I found some entirely parochial pleasure in the fact that its geography mapped exactly onto mine (Harvey Road! Cartwright Gardens!)
I think anyone wanting to sample this very talented young writer, though, might be best advised to skip this first one and to go straight onto Wood's second novel The Ecliptic, a far more assured and original work.
March 29, 2021
I wasn't so sure of what to expect of The Bellwether Revivals but it exceeded my expectations. Sad and beautiful all at once. There is a certain flow to the authors writing that seems to make reading it feel like floating down a stream. Following the words from start to finish is inevitable. The author has done a thorough job when researching narcissistic personality disorder, hypnosis, and musical therapy. You can't help but fall in love with all the characters somehow that it the end you feel almost as your losing close friends. Well done Mr. Wood.
June 3, 2023
“What good were answers now? What good were Crest’s observations and judgments?”
I AM SORRY WASNT THAT THE MAIN REASON OF GOING THROUGH ALL OF THIS?
Let me start over, solid 2.8!
Wanted to give it the half. which is 2.5, from how emotional and heartbroken i was over some scenes! But I couldn’t! At least I can’t do it for the two old men’s and Oscar’s sake!
Don’t get me wrong, i loved most of the thoughts that have been shared in this book, quoted some of what have been said -mostly from the old two men, duh! They were and will still remain my favorites!- and i liked most of the characters!
I did have some confused feelings towards some of them, sometimes they get me mad, sometimes i feel bad for them, sometimes i admire certain thing’s about them! -i am sorry if am confusing you, i am confused my self! and i was honestly never able to express my feelings to any of my friends while reading! Neither to my self!
YES! That’s the exact meaning of a book that gets you through a roller coaster of emotions. wow.
Mainly? I am mad and frustrated! Why did things have to turn this way?! Why did you do that to us?!
It was a slow read book for me since it was clearly not my type but i made a word of finishing it no matter how long it may take me, do i regret borrowing it twice from the library i got it from? .. you know what, this part right here gave me a pause, ran million of answers through my head, yet didn’t get the answer that would satisfy me, and actually describe how i am feeling at this moment.
I liked it, and i hated it, i liked how it pictured lots of scenes, and i hated how some scenes ended in the way it did, i still have questions, I couldn’t find the answers to them, neither think of them or make up excuses inside of my head, I believe some of what happened didn’t have to necessarily happen!
Yeah, no, I can’t put two words together anymore.
I give up, thanks to the author for playing with my feelings this way! I can say it’s good in a way, well, it’s mostly reality and how you face it isn’t? You can’t get answers for everything!
Thank you Herbert for describing hope the way you did! I had to give that a moment of appreciation while reading it!
I know i said let me start over as in i am going to get back to raging over that part, but thinking while typing the rest calmed me down i guess, and helped me think more of the book in general. I am defeated.
—————————————
Do I recommend it? Depends!
If you are a person who’s like me that gets so into the story of the book and build hope and look forward for what’s good that comes after all the suffer? #HappyEndingLovers DO NOT READ IT!
If you want to face reality and accept what may come after, no matter how it may end? Or maybe you want to have a new perspective of viewing life, and learning from others experience in life? Then yes! this book is for you! It have a magical way of making you view people or things in a certain way, and then keeps changing it until you get confused. which by the way, made this book so powerful.
I AM SORRY WASNT THAT THE MAIN REASON OF GOING THROUGH ALL OF THIS?
Let me start over, solid 2.8!
Wanted to give it the half. which is 2.5, from how emotional and heartbroken i was over some scenes! But I couldn’t! At least I can’t do it for the two old men’s and Oscar’s sake!
Don’t get me wrong, i loved most of the thoughts that have been shared in this book, quoted some of what have been said -mostly from the old two men, duh! They were and will still remain my favorites!- and i liked most of the characters!
I did have some confused feelings towards some of them, sometimes they get me mad, sometimes i feel bad for them, sometimes i admire certain thing’s about them! -i am sorry if am confusing you, i am confused my self! and i was honestly never able to express my feelings to any of my friends while reading! Neither to my self!
YES! That’s the exact meaning of a book that gets you through a roller coaster of emotions. wow.
Mainly? I am mad and frustrated! Why did things have to turn this way?! Why did you do that to us?!
It was a slow read book for me since it was clearly not my type but i made a word of finishing it no matter how long it may take me, do i regret borrowing it twice from the library i got it from? .. you know what, this part right here gave me a pause, ran million of answers through my head, yet didn’t get the answer that would satisfy me, and actually describe how i am feeling at this moment.
I liked it, and i hated it, i liked how it pictured lots of scenes, and i hated how some scenes ended in the way it did, i still have questions, I couldn’t find the answers to them, neither think of them or make up excuses inside of my head, I believe some of what happened didn’t have to necessarily happen!
Yeah, no, I can’t put two words together anymore.
I give up, thanks to the author for playing with my feelings this way! I can say it’s good in a way, well, it’s mostly reality and how you face it isn’t? You can’t get answers for everything!
Thank you Herbert for describing hope the way you did! I had to give that a moment of appreciation while reading it!
I know i said let me start over as in i am going to get back to raging over that part, but thinking while typing the rest calmed me down i guess, and helped me think more of the book in general. I am defeated.
—————————————
Do I recommend it? Depends!
If you are a person who’s like me that gets so into the story of the book and build hope and look forward for what’s good that comes after all the suffer? #HappyEndingLovers DO NOT READ IT!
If you want to face reality and accept what may come after, no matter how it may end? Or maybe you want to have a new perspective of viewing life, and learning from others experience in life? Then yes! this book is for you! It have a magical way of making you view people or things in a certain way, and then keeps changing it until you get confused. which by the way, made this book so powerful.
January 8, 2020
I think I picked this nook up in a charity shop having read a review of a subsequent novel by the author in a broadsheet. Well written, boring in parts, spectacular ending. Would be interesting to see how this author's work has developed his subsequent two novels. This book is a solid 3 stars from me.
February 6, 2014
Oscar Lowe is an odd man out at Cambridge. Though he reads widely in literature and philosophy, he grew up working class on a housing estate, didn’t go to university, and now works at Cedarwood nursing home. One day, taking a shortcut to work through the campus, he is drawn by the organ music emanating from the King’s College chapel and wanders in. Here he meets Iris Bellwether, medical student and cellist, and later her brother Eden, an eccentric organ scholar.
Along with Yin, Marcus and Jane, these six become a tight-knit clique, held together by their participation in Eden’s peculiar experiments with hypnosis and musical therapy. He has the notion that his music has healing powers; even as a child he would hypnotize his sister and then stick pins in her to prove she couldn’t feel pain while she was under. Oscar undergoes a similar initiation when Eden mesmerizes him with an organ piece and then, painlessly, shoves a nail through the flap of skin on the top of his hand. Mysteriously, the wound heals by the next day.
Eden keeps scaling the experiments up: he mends Iris’s badly broken leg by wrapping it in towels that have encircled his organ pipes, and later he attempts similar treatment on Herbert Crest, an American psychologist with a terminal brain tumor. But at the same time, Eden is the subject of an experiment himself: Iris and Oscar have gone to Dr. Crest with video recordings of Eden’s ‘sessions’ with Iris, hoping Crest can diagnose Narcissistic Personality Disorder and offer some advice from his clinical experience. Yet Eden may well be one step ahead of them, and as his obsession starts to shade into madness it appears he will in fact turn dangerous – for as the novel’s prologue has already revealed, at least two characters are going to wind up dead.
The Bellwether Revivals bears striking resemblances to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, what with its elegantly sinister tale of secrets amongst a group of posh college students. Wood also echoes Tartt’s evocation of a timeless classiness – apart from a few points of cultural context, one could just as easily be reading a novel set in the 1950s or 1980s (I never could figure out if The Secret History was meant to be period or contemporary). There are also touches of classical English country house suspense, somewhat along the lines of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, especially in the scenes at the Bellwether mansion. Themes of science versus superstition, the power of music, and the extent of family loyalty make for a simultaneously weighty and brisk read.
Characterization is another strong point – at least when it comes to the three main characters; secondary characters Yin, Marcus and Jane are rather flat and pointless, though Oscar’s care home friend Dr. Paulsen and Herbert Crest (former lovers, we later discover) making for particularly endearing old fellows. I can imagine the novel working perfectly as a film: Freddie Fox was surely born to play Eden Bellwether (and every other posh fop), and I can picture either Carey Mulligan or Mia Wasikowska as Iris. If you like your fiction to be intelligent and stylish as well as suspenseful – along the lines of Gone Girl and Liza Klaussmann’s Tigers in Red Weather – The Bellwether Revivals will be a great next novel for you.
(This review originally appeared at Bookkaholic.)
Along with Yin, Marcus and Jane, these six become a tight-knit clique, held together by their participation in Eden’s peculiar experiments with hypnosis and musical therapy. He has the notion that his music has healing powers; even as a child he would hypnotize his sister and then stick pins in her to prove she couldn’t feel pain while she was under. Oscar undergoes a similar initiation when Eden mesmerizes him with an organ piece and then, painlessly, shoves a nail through the flap of skin on the top of his hand. Mysteriously, the wound heals by the next day.
Eden keeps scaling the experiments up: he mends Iris’s badly broken leg by wrapping it in towels that have encircled his organ pipes, and later he attempts similar treatment on Herbert Crest, an American psychologist with a terminal brain tumor. But at the same time, Eden is the subject of an experiment himself: Iris and Oscar have gone to Dr. Crest with video recordings of Eden’s ‘sessions’ with Iris, hoping Crest can diagnose Narcissistic Personality Disorder and offer some advice from his clinical experience. Yet Eden may well be one step ahead of them, and as his obsession starts to shade into madness it appears he will in fact turn dangerous – for as the novel’s prologue has already revealed, at least two characters are going to wind up dead.
The Bellwether Revivals bears striking resemblances to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, what with its elegantly sinister tale of secrets amongst a group of posh college students. Wood also echoes Tartt’s evocation of a timeless classiness – apart from a few points of cultural context, one could just as easily be reading a novel set in the 1950s or 1980s (I never could figure out if The Secret History was meant to be period or contemporary). There are also touches of classical English country house suspense, somewhat along the lines of Ian McEwan’s Atonement, especially in the scenes at the Bellwether mansion. Themes of science versus superstition, the power of music, and the extent of family loyalty make for a simultaneously weighty and brisk read.
Characterization is another strong point – at least when it comes to the three main characters; secondary characters Yin, Marcus and Jane are rather flat and pointless, though Oscar’s care home friend Dr. Paulsen and Herbert Crest (former lovers, we later discover) making for particularly endearing old fellows. I can imagine the novel working perfectly as a film: Freddie Fox was surely born to play Eden Bellwether (and every other posh fop), and I can picture either Carey Mulligan or Mia Wasikowska as Iris. If you like your fiction to be intelligent and stylish as well as suspenseful – along the lines of Gone Girl and Liza Klaussmann’s Tigers in Red Weather – The Bellwether Revivals will be a great next novel for you.
(This review originally appeared at Bookkaholic.)
April 9, 2012
Benjamin Wood grabbed my attention from the first sentence of his debut novel. With three bodies, two dead, one barely alive, we are introduced to a world that is shocking and undefined
Through twist, turns and “coincidence,” the puzzle unfolds: marring music, literature, psychology, religion and science, life and death, with an unhealthy dose of madness. Wood’s prose flow, effortlessly, from page to page – chapter to chapter. The pace is such that there is no good place to close the book and set this story aside. I had a hard time putting it down.
Our protagonist, Oscar Lowe, is a 20-year-old nurse who becomes enmeshed with a group of educated, privileged, students. Two of the group – siblings: the girl, Iris, whom he is falling in love with and her brother, Eden, the ringleader. Eden is something of a prodigy… and possibly a mad man. Things are not always clear as the events are unraveling. Iris is both independent and a damsel in distress. Yet her manner and intellect are beyond her nineteen years of living.
Dr. Paulsen, an elderly, retired professor, in Oscar’s care, is both his educator in literature as well as with cautions about his new friends from the Ivy-league. Paulsen also holds a piece of the puzzle. Things that seem unconnected become entwined as Oscar tries to keep a promise to Iris. With the introduction of Herbert Crest, a long time friend of Dr. Paulsen, Oscar has found an ally in his quest for the truth. A quest that started the moment Oscar diverted from his route home. One decision can alter a life’s journey, leading to a dichotomy of things.
“Hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same.” Crest, a psychologist, informs Oscar. Yet there is hope in the pages of “The Bellwether Revivals,” and not even the most skeptical among the characters seems immune. Really… What is life without hope? The danger lies in what is inspired when all hope is lost and the truth is too much to bear.
Many thanks to Random House of Canada, for the advance copy of, “The Bellwether Revivals,” Anyone who enjoys a mystery or seeks to understand human behavior, will enjoy the ride provided by this story. There’s allot of truth in this work of fiction.
Through twist, turns and “coincidence,” the puzzle unfolds: marring music, literature, psychology, religion and science, life and death, with an unhealthy dose of madness. Wood’s prose flow, effortlessly, from page to page – chapter to chapter. The pace is such that there is no good place to close the book and set this story aside. I had a hard time putting it down.
Our protagonist, Oscar Lowe, is a 20-year-old nurse who becomes enmeshed with a group of educated, privileged, students. Two of the group – siblings: the girl, Iris, whom he is falling in love with and her brother, Eden, the ringleader. Eden is something of a prodigy… and possibly a mad man. Things are not always clear as the events are unraveling. Iris is both independent and a damsel in distress. Yet her manner and intellect are beyond her nineteen years of living.
Dr. Paulsen, an elderly, retired professor, in Oscar’s care, is both his educator in literature as well as with cautions about his new friends from the Ivy-league. Paulsen also holds a piece of the puzzle. Things that seem unconnected become entwined as Oscar tries to keep a promise to Iris. With the introduction of Herbert Crest, a long time friend of Dr. Paulsen, Oscar has found an ally in his quest for the truth. A quest that started the moment Oscar diverted from his route home. One decision can alter a life’s journey, leading to a dichotomy of things.
“Hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same.” Crest, a psychologist, informs Oscar. Yet there is hope in the pages of “The Bellwether Revivals,” and not even the most skeptical among the characters seems immune. Really… What is life without hope? The danger lies in what is inspired when all hope is lost and the truth is too much to bear.
Many thanks to Random House of Canada, for the advance copy of, “The Bellwether Revivals,” Anyone who enjoys a mystery or seeks to understand human behavior, will enjoy the ride provided by this story. There’s allot of truth in this work of fiction.
July 19, 2012
It is difficult to put this book in a nutshell, but my best attempt is to compare it to a literary love child -- it's the ideal combination of a modern version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby meets Donna Tartt's The Secret History. According to the blurb on the top inside cover of the dust jacket, The Bellwether Revivals is "a sophisticated debut novel about the hypnotic influence of love, the beguiling allure of money and the haunting power of music."
But it's more than that. It's a story about the mind-body-soul connection, the complexities of relationships (friendship, family and love) and the mysteries of science, spirituality and art/music. It's a book that will leave me philosophizing at length about my thoughts on hope and the human condition. If this sounds like your cup of tea, don't hesitate to source a copy.
Finally, this book is artfully plotted, with complex characters and luscious writing. It's a great choice for further introspection, discussion with a close friend or a book group. It is Benjamin Wood's first book and he has managed to hit his stride right off the bat. I'm already a fan and very much looking forward to the next step in Mr. Wood's writing career.
Five stars, and a favorite!
But it's more than that. It's a story about the mind-body-soul connection, the complexities of relationships (friendship, family and love) and the mysteries of science, spirituality and art/music. It's a book that will leave me philosophizing at length about my thoughts on hope and the human condition. If this sounds like your cup of tea, don't hesitate to source a copy.
Finally, this book is artfully plotted, with complex characters and luscious writing. It's a great choice for further introspection, discussion with a close friend or a book group. It is Benjamin Wood's first book and he has managed to hit his stride right off the bat. I'm already a fan and very much looking forward to the next step in Mr. Wood's writing career.
Five stars, and a favorite!
October 10, 2012
I picked this up because of it's seeming parallels with the fabulous The Secret History by Donna Tartt. Most of the books that claim to be along the lines of Secret History have always somewhat disappointed me. This one however was different ....
This is possibly one of the truest comparable books to Secret History I've encountered. It's very 'classily' written and has a slightly sinister undercurrent which pulls you in nicely and the ending was unexpected AND didn't disappoint me.
The main reason this lost a star for me was it simply took too long to lure me in. I was just under half way through the novel before I got to the 'couldn't put it down' part.
Well worth a read.
This is possibly one of the truest comparable books to Secret History I've encountered. It's very 'classily' written and has a slightly sinister undercurrent which pulls you in nicely and the ending was unexpected AND didn't disappoint me.
The main reason this lost a star for me was it simply took too long to lure me in. I was just under half way through the novel before I got to the 'couldn't put it down' part.
Well worth a read.
Read
August 14, 2012Finished August 13, 2012
Some pretty twisted shit. Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
Some pretty twisted shit. Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
November 20, 2025
De la pluie, des vestes de Tweed, du sherry, des étudiants fortunés, ça fleure bon le campus novel. Ces étudiants brillants attirés par le surnaturel ou le mystère m’on remémoré une lecture coup de coeur qui remonte à quelques années, Le maître des illusions.
Alors un peu de circonspection, ne nous emballons pas, j’avais adoré ce livre qui a fait la réputation de Donna Tartt, mais cette lecture remonte à quelques années – l’engouement de la jeunesse c’est quelque chose. J’ai malheureusement perdu depuis bien longtemps cet enthousiasme naïf et bien failli arrêter la lecture à plusieurs reprises. Si les interminables descriptions font partie du charme, j’ai eu la désagréable impression que le livre aurait pu, sans ce remplissage, largement tenir en 300 pages. La narration est linéaire et les personnages secondaires ne sont pas exploités alors que la relation amoureuse occupe une place démesurée.
J’ai apprécié l’ambiance, le plaisir d’une lecture facile et la belle qualité de l’édition signée Zulma, mais pas plus.
Également publié sur mon blog.
Alors un peu de circonspection, ne nous emballons pas, j’avais adoré ce livre qui a fait la réputation de Donna Tartt, mais cette lecture remonte à quelques années – l’engouement de la jeunesse c’est quelque chose. J’ai malheureusement perdu depuis bien longtemps cet enthousiasme naïf et bien failli arrêter la lecture à plusieurs reprises. Si les interminables descriptions font partie du charme, j’ai eu la désagréable impression que le livre aurait pu, sans ce remplissage, largement tenir en 300 pages. La narration est linéaire et les personnages secondaires ne sont pas exploités alors que la relation amoureuse occupe une place démesurée.
J’ai apprécié l’ambiance, le plaisir d’une lecture facile et la belle qualité de l’édition signée Zulma, mais pas plus.
Également publié sur mon blog.
September 24, 2019
2.5 stars
The translation may have been for a lot (I haven’t read a translation in years and will never again) but... meh.
The translation may have been for a lot (I haven’t read a translation in years and will never again) but... meh.
April 3, 2012
“There is no great genius without some note of madness” runs the strap line for The Bellweather Revivals, an entertaining first novel with some dark undertones by Benjamin Wood. The story is told mainly from the perspective of Oscar Lowe, a clever but uneducated young man working as a nursing home assistant in Cambridge. Oscar falls in with a close knit group of privileged students which includes Eden Bellweather and his sister Iris, and gradually becomes part of their circle. Oscar forms a relationship with Iris and Eden provides the genius with a note of madness; from the beginning it is clear that things are not going to end well.
Eden is an extraordinarily talented musician, and believes in the power of music to manipulate emotions, something that most people would ascribe to. However, his belief has gradually extended beyond that so that he now believes that through music he can physically heal people who are unwell and is looking for opportunities to demonstrate this. Oscar enters Eden’s world at a key moment, and becomes inadvertently an element in Eden’s experiments. Oscar becomes increasingly convinced that Eden is unstable and in turn tries to understand what underpins his behaviour and beliefs, roping in American psychologist Herbert Crest who just happens to have an incurable brain tumour. There is much talk of narcissistic personality disorder (readers can judge themselves against the diagnostic criteria!), but for most of the novel it is unclear whether or not Eden has some supernatural or magical ability – “The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence”, to quote Nietzsche.
Overall I enjoyed this book, without being completely engrossed. The behaviour of some of the characters appeared unconvincing to me and the way in which they spoke jarred a little, Eden’s father Theo (a surgeon) being a key example. Nonetheless, The Bellweather Revivals provides an interesting portrayal of a dysfunctional family and kept my attention well as the plot moved along with good momentum. The origins of Eden’s behaviour were hinted at (a childhood experience of a religious revivalist meeting in Florida, and an experience with a blackbird), but never really explained. I would have liked this to be developed a little more. However, I think that Benjamin Wood is a young writer who is well worth watching and I will look forward to his future books.
Eden is an extraordinarily talented musician, and believes in the power of music to manipulate emotions, something that most people would ascribe to. However, his belief has gradually extended beyond that so that he now believes that through music he can physically heal people who are unwell and is looking for opportunities to demonstrate this. Oscar enters Eden’s world at a key moment, and becomes inadvertently an element in Eden’s experiments. Oscar becomes increasingly convinced that Eden is unstable and in turn tries to understand what underpins his behaviour and beliefs, roping in American psychologist Herbert Crest who just happens to have an incurable brain tumour. There is much talk of narcissistic personality disorder (readers can judge themselves against the diagnostic criteria!), but for most of the novel it is unclear whether or not Eden has some supernatural or magical ability – “The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence”, to quote Nietzsche.
Overall I enjoyed this book, without being completely engrossed. The behaviour of some of the characters appeared unconvincing to me and the way in which they spoke jarred a little, Eden’s father Theo (a surgeon) being a key example. Nonetheless, The Bellweather Revivals provides an interesting portrayal of a dysfunctional family and kept my attention well as the plot moved along with good momentum. The origins of Eden’s behaviour were hinted at (a childhood experience of a religious revivalist meeting in Florida, and an experience with a blackbird), but never really explained. I would have liked this to be developed a little more. However, I think that Benjamin Wood is a young writer who is well worth watching and I will look forward to his future books.
January 12, 2014
I spent a lot of time not reading this book, partly because of having lots of other things that needed doing, and partly because it seemed to be much too self-consciously "clever".
I was also irritated by the constant use of "like" instead of "as if" in sentences such as "It seemed like he was ...". While some of the characters in the book may have spoken in this way, I find it beggars belief that an elderly retired Professor of Literature at Cambridge University would do so. Perhaps I am being needlessly pedantic, but it knocked a star off my assessment because it set my teeth on edge every time it appeared.
Having said that, the story was all right but when the beginning of the book starts with bodies and then goes back to where it all began six months earlier, there aren't really too many surprises to be had.
Not recommended
I was also irritated by the constant use of "like" instead of "as if" in sentences such as "It seemed like he was ...". While some of the characters in the book may have spoken in this way, I find it beggars belief that an elderly retired Professor of Literature at Cambridge University would do so. Perhaps I am being needlessly pedantic, but it knocked a star off my assessment because it set my teeth on edge every time it appeared.
Having said that, the story was all right but when the beginning of the book starts with bodies and then goes back to where it all began six months earlier, there aren't really too many surprises to be had.
Not recommended
February 13, 2024
My favourite novel. The most beautiful, psychologically fascinating, and heart-breaking novel a person might ever read. It's hard to explain what exactly makes this book so special - believe me, I've tried. But I think the best way I can describe it is by saying this: I read a lot of books. A LOT of books. Some are bad, a lot of them are okay, and a few of them are good, satisfying, well-written reads. None of them really make me feel much of anything, no real emotions. The Bellwether Revivals makes me feel just about every emotion on the spectrum as I read, and re-read and re-read. I feel happiness, hope, and often despair. I would encourage anyone who wants a book that challenges them to find deeper meaning to read this one.
February 24, 2023
(2,5 stelle)
Il caso Bellwether presenta alcuni degli elementi tipici del dark academia, ma non l’aura e il fascino che solitamente accompagnano questo filone: siamo infatti a Cambridge e la storia ruota intorno alle vicende di un gruppo ristretto di amici, che studiano al King’s College.
⠀
Il protagonista però non è uno di loro. Non è un ragazzo ricco e privilegiato, ma un giovane che lavora alla residenza per anziani del quartiere e che si ritrova quasi per caso ad uscire con una ragazza appartenente al gruppetto.
⠀
Per la prima volta dunque troviamo un’ambientazione dark academia, accompagnata da un personaggio lucido e consapevole della patina che avvolge la vita nel campus, tra mattoncini rossi e guglie gotiche.
⠀
Oscar - il protagonista - perde la testa per Iris fin dal loro primo incontro e si vede costretto, per frequentarla, ad avere a che fare con i suoi amici e soprattutto con suo fratello, Eden, un individuo tanto geniale quanto inquietante, convinto di poter curare le malattie attraverso l’ipnosi e la musica.
⠀
Le premesse c’erano tutte, ma allora cosa non mi ha convinto? In primis i personaggi - gli amici - che ho trovato appena abbozzati, macchiette inconsistenti. Poi il ritmo narrativo, che non riesce a catturare fino in fondo il lettore. Infine manca l’atmosfera, quell’aria di polverosa magica erudizione, che ci ha fatto perdere la testa per il dark academia. Qui tutto pare grigio e squallido, come una mattina di gennaio.
⠀
Il giudizio non è stato totalmente negativo perché ho apprezzato i risvolti psicologici (e tutto ciò che ne consegue) del personaggio di Eden, l’unico veramente a tutto tondo. Tuttavia mi aspettavo qualcosa in più da questo romanzo, che si guadagna tre stelle scarse.
Il caso Bellwether presenta alcuni degli elementi tipici del dark academia, ma non l’aura e il fascino che solitamente accompagnano questo filone: siamo infatti a Cambridge e la storia ruota intorno alle vicende di un gruppo ristretto di amici, che studiano al King’s College.
⠀
Il protagonista però non è uno di loro. Non è un ragazzo ricco e privilegiato, ma un giovane che lavora alla residenza per anziani del quartiere e che si ritrova quasi per caso ad uscire con una ragazza appartenente al gruppetto.
⠀
Per la prima volta dunque troviamo un’ambientazione dark academia, accompagnata da un personaggio lucido e consapevole della patina che avvolge la vita nel campus, tra mattoncini rossi e guglie gotiche.
⠀
Oscar - il protagonista - perde la testa per Iris fin dal loro primo incontro e si vede costretto, per frequentarla, ad avere a che fare con i suoi amici e soprattutto con suo fratello, Eden, un individuo tanto geniale quanto inquietante, convinto di poter curare le malattie attraverso l’ipnosi e la musica.
⠀
Le premesse c’erano tutte, ma allora cosa non mi ha convinto? In primis i personaggi - gli amici - che ho trovato appena abbozzati, macchiette inconsistenti. Poi il ritmo narrativo, che non riesce a catturare fino in fondo il lettore. Infine manca l’atmosfera, quell’aria di polverosa magica erudizione, che ci ha fatto perdere la testa per il dark academia. Qui tutto pare grigio e squallido, come una mattina di gennaio.
⠀
Il giudizio non è stato totalmente negativo perché ho apprezzato i risvolti psicologici (e tutto ciò che ne consegue) del personaggio di Eden, l’unico veramente a tutto tondo. Tuttavia mi aspettavo qualcosa in più da questo romanzo, che si guadagna tre stelle scarse.
July 23, 2014
This book is absolutely superb for about 3/4 but stumbles and falls down badly in the end when it becomes cheap psycho-melodrama, eschewing the potentialities of before.
Definitely a page turner and while the main character Oscar is a bit improbable in some ways, he is very compelling and you cannot help but root for him and his quite unlikely love story with Iris Bellwether, a medical student at Cambridge.
But there is a hitch and it's not Iris' rich surgeon father or her Church going snobbish mother (Oscar is a proud atheist and nursing home attendant from a working class family); it's Eden the charismatic older brother of Iris and extremely talented organ player who believes his music can heal the sick and dying and his need for adulation conflicts with Oscar practical experience of nursing homes and how the body breaks down due to age and illness.
But who knows, Eden may be onto something as his healing seems to work; though of course destroying a golden boy's illusion may be dangerous
Overall the superb first 3/4 offers enough to make me recommend this novel but I wish the author would have been more imaginative; sometimes going sff-nal really would help and this book is a clear example of something that would be much better with some sffnal touches or at least more ambiguity, though I can also see the point of the author which is driven home quite emphatically in the last few pages; that lack of subtlety added a little to my disappointment for the ending, though there is a stark power to it in a way.
Definitely a page turner and while the main character Oscar is a bit improbable in some ways, he is very compelling and you cannot help but root for him and his quite unlikely love story with Iris Bellwether, a medical student at Cambridge.
But there is a hitch and it's not Iris' rich surgeon father or her Church going snobbish mother (Oscar is a proud atheist and nursing home attendant from a working class family); it's Eden the charismatic older brother of Iris and extremely talented organ player who believes his music can heal the sick and dying and his need for adulation conflicts with Oscar practical experience of nursing homes and how the body breaks down due to age and illness.
But who knows, Eden may be onto something as his healing seems to work; though of course destroying a golden boy's illusion may be dangerous
Overall the superb first 3/4 offers enough to make me recommend this novel but I wish the author would have been more imaginative; sometimes going sff-nal really would help and this book is a clear example of something that would be much better with some sffnal touches or at least more ambiguity, though I can also see the point of the author which is driven home quite emphatically in the last few pages; that lack of subtlety added a little to my disappointment for the ending, though there is a stark power to it in a way.
June 29, 2012
Original Review: http://alexandrampatterson.com/2012/0...
Summary: The Bellwether Revivals takes place mainly at King’s College, Cambridge and the surrounding area. (Don’t you love it already?) Oscar Lowe is an outsider who works in a nursing home nearby who falls in love with the privileged medical student. As he dives into her world he realizes that the life on the other side isn’t always as beautiful as it seems.
Bechdel Test?: Unfortunately no. The book is from the perspective of a male character (Oscar) and he primarily interacts with other men. Iris and Jane, the two females who show up the most, don’t really talk to each other with Oscar around.
Rating: 5/5
It has been a long time since I’ve read a novel in which the prose was as beautiful as The Bellwether Revivals. Wood’s words are more than beautiful, they’re enchanting and brought me so deeply into the story that I forgot the time of day. I loved the mix of not knowing whether there was a supernatural element or whether there was just paranoia and delusion. The unreliable narrator of Oscar Lowe, coupled with the psychoanalysis provided by Dr. Herbert Cress, I was on my toes the whole time trying to figure out what would happen next. Honestly, if you only read one book this summer make it this one!
Summary: The Bellwether Revivals takes place mainly at King’s College, Cambridge and the surrounding area. (Don’t you love it already?) Oscar Lowe is an outsider who works in a nursing home nearby who falls in love with the privileged medical student. As he dives into her world he realizes that the life on the other side isn’t always as beautiful as it seems.
Bechdel Test?: Unfortunately no. The book is from the perspective of a male character (Oscar) and he primarily interacts with other men. Iris and Jane, the two females who show up the most, don’t really talk to each other with Oscar around.
Rating: 5/5
It has been a long time since I’ve read a novel in which the prose was as beautiful as The Bellwether Revivals. Wood’s words are more than beautiful, they’re enchanting and brought me so deeply into the story that I forgot the time of day. I loved the mix of not knowing whether there was a supernatural element or whether there was just paranoia and delusion. The unreliable narrator of Oscar Lowe, coupled with the psychoanalysis provided by Dr. Herbert Cress, I was on my toes the whole time trying to figure out what would happen next. Honestly, if you only read one book this summer make it this one!
August 10, 2012
If you say Gothic I am there. I really love an atmospheric English read but this didn't do it for me. A strange meandering plot and characters I couldn't care about sunk this one for me.
Oscar Lowe is a true academic but he can't afford college so he does his studying on the side while he works a nursing home job. He falls for poor little rich girl Iris Bellwether which probably would have been just dandy except for the fact that she has a crazy brother with bit of a cruel streak. Eden Bellwether may or may not be able to physically heal people with music. In any case he suffers from delusions of grandeur. The more Oscar learns about the Bellwether family and friends the more he becomes convinced that "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Just how rotten he will soon find out. There is also a sub plot involving one of the nursing home patients and his former lover who attempts to evaluate Eden.
The novel just left me cold. There were parts that were interesting but there were more parts that dragged. Another strange thing was that it was set in contemporary times but the way it was written made it seem like it happened in the 1800's. The characters and setting seemed very old fashioned even though there were supposedly in the year 2003. The whole thing might have worked better if it had been written as historical fiction
Oscar Lowe is a true academic but he can't afford college so he does his studying on the side while he works a nursing home job. He falls for poor little rich girl Iris Bellwether which probably would have been just dandy except for the fact that she has a crazy brother with bit of a cruel streak. Eden Bellwether may or may not be able to physically heal people with music. In any case he suffers from delusions of grandeur. The more Oscar learns about the Bellwether family and friends the more he becomes convinced that "Something is rotten in the state of Denmark." Just how rotten he will soon find out. There is also a sub plot involving one of the nursing home patients and his former lover who attempts to evaluate Eden.
The novel just left me cold. There were parts that were interesting but there were more parts that dragged. Another strange thing was that it was set in contemporary times but the way it was written made it seem like it happened in the 1800's. The characters and setting seemed very old fashioned even though there were supposedly in the year 2003. The whole thing might have worked better if it had been written as historical fiction
January 26, 2015
His first novel, the author tells this gothic tale "of a man who believes music can not only affect emotions but also heal." More so, a man who believes he
holds
the power to heal.
Can it be true or is he delusional?
We are introduced to Oscar Lowe. As he hears the music coming from the chapel he passes by on his walks home from work, we are introduced to siblings Iris & Eden Bellwether. Along with the introduction to their closely-knit friends, who all attend university in Cambridge, Oscar not only begins to be accepted by the group, but falls for Iris.
After that one night Oscar participates in Eden’s experiment, Iris shares her worries over her brother’s antics. They enlist the assistance of Herbert Crist to try to help Eden. Is there any hope?
As the events unfold, you cannot help but feel spent through Oscar’s point of view.
A great gothic psychological thriller!!!
Can it be true or is he delusional?
We are introduced to Oscar Lowe. As he hears the music coming from the chapel he passes by on his walks home from work, we are introduced to siblings Iris & Eden Bellwether. Along with the introduction to their closely-knit friends, who all attend university in Cambridge, Oscar not only begins to be accepted by the group, but falls for Iris.
After that one night Oscar participates in Eden’s experiment, Iris shares her worries over her brother’s antics. They enlist the assistance of Herbert Crist to try to help Eden. Is there any hope?
As the events unfold, you cannot help but feel spent through Oscar’s point of view.
A great gothic psychological thriller!!!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 616 reviews