Episode 109 — Benjamin Wood

Summary: Benjamin Wood is the guest. His debut novel, THE BELLWETHER REVIVALS, is now available from Viking in the United States and Simon & Schuster in the UK. THE BELLWETHER REVIVALS was an official selection of The TNB Book Club. Joanna Smith Rakoff raves "Oh how I loved this novel! I was drawn in from the very first sentence and pretty much didn’t put it down until I reached the last. This is the kind of story that makes you want to hole up under the covers and not come out until you’ve uncovered the mysteries at its heart. I find myself constantly thinking of Wood’s characters—wonderful, surprising Oscar Lowe and those beautiful, doomed Bellwethers. It reminded me, more than anything, of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, another novel that utterly consumed me, body and soul." And Susan Daitch says "Discovering the world of Benjamin Wood’s characters is like unlocking a series of psychological puzzles, mysterious and completely engrossing. Impossible to put down, 'The Bellwether Revivals' is a brilliant investigation into obsessions and their entirely unpredictable consequences." Monologue topics: heat, Austerlitz, industrial warfare, no sleep, Terence McKenna, shamans, hills, mountains, getting ripped to pieces.