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ISBN 978-2-84304-707-7
23,50 € • Paru le 28/08/14
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LITTÉRATURE
ISBN 978-2-84304-707-7
23,50 € • Paru le 28/08/14
• TÉLÉCHARGER
LA COUVERTURE EN HD
• IMPRIMER L’ARGUMENTAIRE
LITTÉRATURE
Benjamin Wood
Le Complexe d’Eden Bellwether
Roman traduit de l’anglais (Royaume-Uni) par Renaud Morin
PRIX DU ROMAN FNAC 2014
Benjamin Wood signe un premier roman magistral sur les frontières entre génie et folie, la manipulation et ses jeux pervers – qui peuvent conduire aux plus extravagantes affabulations, à la démence ou au meurtre.
Cambridge, de nos jours. Au détour d’une allée de l’imposant campus, Oscar est irrésistiblement attiré par la puissance de l’orgue et des chants provenant d’une chapelle. Subjugué malgré lui, Oscar ne peut maîtriser un sentiment d’extase. Premier rouage de l’engrenage. Dans l’assemblée, une jeune femme attire son attention. Iris n’est autre que la sœur de l’organiste virtuose, Eden Bellwether, dont la passion exclusive pour la musique baroque s’accompagne d’étranges conceptions sur son usage hypnotique…
Bientôt intégré au petit groupe qui gravite autour d’Eden et Iris, mais de plus en plus perturbé par ce qui se trame dans la chapelle des Bellwether, Oscar en appelle à Herbert Crest, spécialiste incontesté des troubles de la personnalité. De manière inexorable, le célèbre professeur et l’étudiant manipulateur vont s’affronter dans une partie d’échecs en forme de duel, où chaque pièce avancée met en jeu l’équilibre mental de l’un et l’espérance de survie de l’autre.
“D'autres auteurs avant lui ont exploré la proximité entre génie et folie, mais Wood traite cette thématique familière avec une fraîcheur et une intelligence qui laissent présager de grandes choses à venir.”
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT
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– France Culture, « La Grande Table », Caroline Broué.
– France Culture, « La Semaine culturelle de Frédéric Pommier ».
Actualités et rencontres avec Benjamin Wood
04/10/2014 RENCONTRE AVEC BENJAMIN WOOD À LIBRAIRIE LA MAISON JAUNELa librairie la Maison Jaune accueille Benjamin Wood pour une rencontre autour du Complexe d'Eden Bellwether, le samedi 4 octobre à partir de 14h.
04/10/2014 RENCONTRE AVEC BENJAMIN WOOD À LIBRAIRIE LA MAISON JAUNELa librairie la Maison Jaune accueille Benjamin Wood pour une rencontre autour du Complexe d'Eden Bellwether, le samedi 4 octobre à partir de 14h.
Well, it's been quite a week for the Bellwethers in France! First, the translated edition of the book was published by the brilliant Editions Zulma on 28th August.
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The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood – review
A novel of ideas
King's College chapel, Cambridge. Photograph: Adam Davy/PA
"Hope is a form of madness. A benevolent one, sure, but madness all the same." So says Herbert Crest, one of the central characters in Benjamin Wood's debut novel The Bellwether Revivals. In this multi-themed and far-reaching novel, the dichotomies of reason and superstition, sanity and madness, science and faith, are given close and sustained attention.
Oscar is a 20-year-old whose bookishness has prompted him to leave his working-class family in Watford for a life in Cambridge. When passing King's College chapel one evening he is drawn inside by the sound of the organ, and it's here in the congregation that he meets Iris Bellwether, a medical student with whom he falls in love. Gradually, over the course of the novel, Oscar is assimilated into Iris's group of friends, which includes her brother, Eden, the organist whose music drew Oscar into the chapel.
Oscar is a 20-year-old whose bookishness has prompted him to leave his working-class family in Watford for a life in Cambridge. When passing King's College chapel one evening he is drawn inside by the sound of the organ, and it's here in the congregation that he meets Iris Bellwether, a medical student with whom he falls in love. Gradually, over the course of the novel, Oscar is assimilated into Iris's group of friends, which includes her brother, Eden, the organist whose music drew Oscar into the chapel.
Eden is a musical prodigy who believes that music – and in particular that of the composer Johann Mattheson – can effect in its listeners physical and spiritual renovation. It is this theory that forms the core of the novel. He is so intent on demonstrating the power of Mattheson's music that he arranges revivals in the composer's style to accompany his own audacious displays of healing (early in the novel he hypnotises Oscar, drives a nail through his hand and then brings about a rapid closing of the wound).
Iris, suspecting her brother suffers delusions of grandeur and needs psychiatric help, deploys Oscar to help her find proof of Eden's illness. Into the novel comes Herbert Crest, an elderly psychologist whose brain tumour has prompted him to research at first hand a book about alternative medicine and faith healing. It's when Eden begins to administer a course of "treatment" to Crest that the questions around Eden's sanity become paramount.
Is Eden gifted or deluded? When does eccentric behaviour become pathological? What is the role of faith in the modern world? "Our modern faith in science has become just as blind as our old-fashioned faith in God," Iris ventures. There are issues of genealogy and class too: to what extent is Eden a product of his wealthy and exacting parents? Can – should – Oscar leave his job as a care assistant in a nursing home to pursue his education, and escape the legacy of his hard upbringing?
This is an accomplished novel, suffused with intelligence and integrity.
Wood gives voice to theories and ideas in a lucid and accessible way. If the novel's closed world of privileged Cambridge students becomes a little stultifying at times, there are moments of expansive beauty that compensate – an imaginary moonlit tennis game between Oscar and Iris, for example. And there are characterisations that are both moving and comic – Paulsen, one of the residents in Oscar's care home, trying to work out how many grooves there are in his ceiling's Artex, explaining that "a man can't go to his grave without closure on a matter like that".
Where the novel falters perhaps is in its ability to support the weight of its themes. On the whole the characters are not deeply drawn and are very much defined by the needs of the plot. This is certainly the case for the fascinating Eden, who could merit a novel of his own, but it applies even to Oscar, who appears to have no life, physical or mental, outside the immediate demands the story makes of him. In itself there is nothing wrong with this approach, and this skilful novel has flow, pace and a lightness of touch. But when the ending comes – and it is a really crushing ending – there is the feeling that the characters have been too sparely sketched and the tone too light to bear up under the force of that outcome.
Samantha Harvey's All Is Song is published by Jonathan Cape.
Where the novel falters perhaps is in its ability to support the weight of its themes. On the whole the characters are not deeply drawn and are very much defined by the needs of the plot. This is certainly the case for the fascinating Eden, who could merit a novel of his own, but it applies even to Oscar, who appears to have no life, physical or mental, outside the immediate demands the story makes of him. In itself there is nothing wrong with this approach, and this skilful novel has flow, pace and a lightness of touch. But when the ending comes – and it is a really crushing ending – there is the feeling that the characters have been too sparely sketched and the tone too light to bear up under the force of that outcome.
Samantha Harvey's All Is Song is published by Jonathan Cape.
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