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A review by caitlinxmartin
The Bellwether Revivals by Renaud Morin, Benjamin Wood
5.0
I've had the great pleasure of reading some wonderful debut novels this year. I got two of them around the same time and they came out within a month of each other. One was The Starboard Sea by Amber Dermont, the other was The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood. Both are school stories, although the school setting is different. In Dermont's book it's American prep school in the 1980's - in Wood's it is Cambridge and its environs. Both are about a young man's journey through the worlds of privilege and elite and the way their encounters change who they are and, ultimately, help them grow up.
I was immediately attracted to The Bellwether Revivals because it was described as similar to The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Since those are both favorites of mine, reading this was a no-brainer, although my expectations weren't terribly high. Most books compared to these two don't stand a snowball's chance in hell - it's sort of unfair to put those labels on a book.
I loved The Bellwether Revivals. It does, indeed, contain elements that make it similar to either book, but its voice is its own and it's a wonderful voice. Where The Secret History is all religious ecstasy disguised under a great deal of chilliness, The Bellwether Revivals is more about belief in and about others. Eden Bellwether, like Henry Winter before him, is a narcissist. His world is Edencentric - even in the healing games he plays it's really all about his own glory. I know some people found him ambiguous, found the suspense in the novel to be whether or not Eden could heal, but for me it was about what would happen when he was inevitably exposed for who he was. How far off the rails could things go?
Juxtaposing the Bellwethers is Oscar, a working class man who is taken up by and falls in love with Iris, Eden's sister. The tension in the novel between the worlds the characters inhabit, particularly given the strangeness of Oscar's Cambridge friends, holds the story together. Oscar's sheer likeability and strong sense of self carry the tale along through all its improbabilities.
This is the kind of book that makes it difficult to find something to read after it. It's difficult to measure up. Did I mention that I loved this book? Another favorite for this year and a wonderful debut of an author I look forward to reading in the future. Highly recommended.
I was immediately attracted to The Bellwether Revivals because it was described as similar to The Secret History by Donna Tartt and Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Since those are both favorites of mine, reading this was a no-brainer, although my expectations weren't terribly high. Most books compared to these two don't stand a snowball's chance in hell - it's sort of unfair to put those labels on a book.
I loved The Bellwether Revivals. It does, indeed, contain elements that make it similar to either book, but its voice is its own and it's a wonderful voice. Where The Secret History is all religious ecstasy disguised under a great deal of chilliness, The Bellwether Revivals is more about belief in and about others. Eden Bellwether, like Henry Winter before him, is a narcissist. His world is Edencentric - even in the healing games he plays it's really all about his own glory. I know some people found him ambiguous, found the suspense in the novel to be whether or not Eden could heal, but for me it was about what would happen when he was inevitably exposed for who he was. How far off the rails could things go?
Juxtaposing the Bellwethers is Oscar, a working class man who is taken up by and falls in love with Iris, Eden's sister. The tension in the novel between the worlds the characters inhabit, particularly given the strangeness of Oscar's Cambridge friends, holds the story together. Oscar's sheer likeability and strong sense of self carry the tale along through all its improbabilities.
This is the kind of book that makes it difficult to find something to read after it. It's difficult to measure up. Did I mention that I loved this book? Another favorite for this year and a wonderful debut of an author I look forward to reading in the future. Highly recommended.