Reviews
The Revelations
Andrew Tate
Alex Preston
Faber & Faber, 288pp
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Terry Eagleton once claimed that, as a form, the
realist, modern novel is ‘as nervous of religious debate as a pub
landlord’. The Revelations, Alex Preston’s second novel, is
notably insouciant about God-talk and pubs or, indeed, God-talk in
pubs. The spiritual awakenings and disenchantments of this
promising, if deeply frustrating follow-up to The Bleeding City,
frequently transpire in an intoxicated blur. A number of Preston’s
characters experience the gift of tongues but it isn’t always clear
what kind of spirit has inspired the otherworldly glossolalia.
The Revelations takes its name from the band formed by four
friends at an unnamed, collegiate university. This quartet –
Marcus, Abby, Lee and Mouse – have, after disillusionment and
post-graduation excess, become members of a popular and shiny form
of contemporary Christianity known simply as ‘the Course’.
Preston certainly offers an alternative image of church life to the
one that many people of faith often grumble about: in lieu of the
too-familiar figure of the social inadequate with bad hair, no
dress sense and censorious views, the core protagonists (however
privately damaged and lost) are popular, intelligent and
attractive.
Marcus and Abby, a gilded couple, enjoy the wealth generated by
his job as a lawyer in the city and have become
leading-lights at St Botolph’s, represented as the kind of London
church frequented primarily by the affluent. Lee, who aspires to
the ethereal, self-denying sainthood of the female mystics she is
researching, is a source of infatuation for every other major
character. The fact that she continues to sleep with a variety of
men – including new recruits – is a source of continual
disappointment to Mouse, a man-boy whose choice of nickname,
borrowed from the son of Kenneth Grahame, author of The Wind of
the Willows, is indicative of a desperate desire to prolong
childhood.
The narrative is at its best in addressing the kind of
frustrations of a distinctively metropolitan, prosperous,
post-youth culture. It is also astute – if not exactly subtle –
regarding the complicity of some forms of religion with corporate
greed. The young professionals who attend St Botolph’s are required
to reform their sexual lives but are reassured that they can
continue to be as predatory as ever on the trading floor. One minor
character, a rare doubting voice, is concerned that ‘the course’
allows its members to ‘think that they can act without consequence’
because ‘God forgives them’.
The novel has affinities with Donna Tartt’s The Secret
History (1992): both feature exclusive, highly- educated
cliques who participate in secretive religious rituals, imbibe
endless quantities of booze and have a lot of sex. And, like
Tartt’s hugely successful debut, the plot – part rites of passage,
part urban Gothic narrative – wrestles with the delicate line
between compromise and corruption, innocence and naivety. Yet this
spectral, uncanny dimension is where, for me, The Revelations loses
momentum. Midway through the narrative, the characters set out for
a retreat at a grand rural pile belonging to the Earl, a
shadowy-figure who either bankrolls ‘the Course’ or who uses it for
his own personal gain. The shift in tone is less compelling than
mildly sensational and, though personal crises are heightened, the
sense that this is a serious attempt to address faith and doubt is
sacrificed.
One of the problems with The Revelations is its
representation of the charismatic clergyman who leads ‘the
Course’. David Nightingale, a man adept both at marketing the
miraculous and mollifying the conscience of wealthy city traders,
is by far the novel’s least convincing figure. Indeed, this
smooth-talking, quietly coercive priest is barely a fully-formed
character, more a constellation of sinister gestures and glib
clichés. He also has an alarming proclivity for referring to young
people as ‘you guys’; the chummy soubriquet is, in fiction and
film, a sure signifier of malevolence. ‘Don’t let the Devil work
through you, Marcus’ he warns the most sceptical of his young
protégés. I’m quite prepared to believe that some clerics say this
kind of thing but, somehow, it reads rather clumsily on the
page. And it is clear, from the outset, that this is not a
man we should trust. As it stands, the narrative has so much
antipathy for Nightingale that it’s never quite clear why four
bright, intellectually curious and sociable Londoners capitulate so
easily to his manipulative behaviour. This is, I suspect, partly a
problem with form: as a novel that hinges on questions of
perception, misunderstanding and limited perspective, the
all-knowing narrative tone is somewhat too secure, too bossy to
support any sense of ambiguity. The individual accounts of Lee,
Abby, Marcus and Mouse would, oddly, have been more persuasive.
Late in the narrative, Marcus confesses that the mess in which
he and his friends find themselves has sparked more faith: ‘I’m
putting everything in God’s hands…that’s why I’ve lost control’.
This might be the get-out clause of a man skilled in legal
sophistry or a genuine leap of faith. The Revelations has some
acute things to say about contemporary religion – particularly
about its easy accommodation with an equally contemporary
guilt-free self-seeking – and doesn’t simply mock the pursuit of
God. However, this might have been a much more subtle work of
fiction without forfeiting its critical edge had it dodged the
temptations of melodrama.
Andy Tate
