Just Jennifer

Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood (Riverhead Books, June 2012)

A startling prologue depicting a scene of death and confusion is juxtaposed next to the first scene in which twenty-year-old Oscar Lowe, a caregiver at Cedarbrook Nursing Home, wanders into a Cambridge chapel, lured in by the sounds of Eden Bellwether’s hypnotic organ playing.  There Oscar meets, and falls in love with Eden’s younger sister Iris, a medical student who wants Oscar’s help in proving that Eden is mentally ill.  Eden is a gifted musician who believes that musical therapy can hypnotize and cure physical ailments, including Iris’s broken leg and a psychologist’s brain tumor.  As Eden’s obsession to cure grows, so does his madness and so his decline begins into a madness that no one, not even Iris can stop.  Wood’s prose is as lyrical as Eden’s music as he envelopes all of the reader’s senses with his descriptions of the sights, smells, and most importantly, the sounds, Oscar experiences as he is drawn into this gothic family.  Even though the end is inevitable, and the results displayed in the prologue, there is a palpable tension present as Oscar watches hopelessly as Eden, and Iris by association, spiral out of control in this wonderfully atmospheric first novel.