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Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin WoodMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
On the way home after his shift at the care home where he worked as a nurse's assistant, 20-year-old Oscar Lowe wandered into a chapel on the grounds of Cambridge University one day to listen to the organ music. After the service, as young men often do, he began chatting with an attractive young woman, Iris Bellwether, whose brother Eden was the organist. From such chance meetings do lives change.
Iris and Eden were products of privilege: boarding school, music lessons, prestigious university education, with neither a thought to money nor concept of cost. Oscar's life couldn't have been more different. But his and Iris's mutual attraction transcended the difference in their social backgrounds, and they swiftly fell in love. Iris's and Eden's small group of friends made room in their closed circle for Oscar. Eden, on the other hand, remained aloof, disapproving, with a penchant for insults so subtle Oscar wasn't sure he actually heard them, or if he was being overly sensitive.
Over time, Iris began to confide in Oscar her worries about Eden: the childhood mistreatments, the obsessive behavior, the sheer hubris of his belief that he can heal people through music. Convinced he suffered from a severe psychological disorder, she wondered if there was someone who could help: in secret, of course, because Eden would never willingly subject himself to therapy. Together, she and Oscar came up with a plan to have Eden evaluated, thus setting in motion the beginning of the end, and the tragedy that opens and closes the book.
Benjamin Wood's debut novel is beautifully written, and somewhat reminiscent of Donna Tartt's A Secret History. He captures the opulence and arrogance of the Bellwethers' lifestyle as seen through Oscar's eyes, with echoes of Fitzgerald's "The rich are different" ringing through the prose. The living room at the Bellwether family home had "...the conscious extravagance of a hotel lobby;" Iris's parents "...spent more money on cognac than most people could retire on." Oscar enjoys the luxury of becoming part of this privileged circle, but he is not seduced by it, and in the end, may be the only person who survives relatively undamaged.
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