The Revelations

In Alex Preston's second novel four university friends are drawn together through membership of an enlightened sect, which the author bases on the Church of England's Alpha Course. As they negotiate the tribulations of their mid-twenties, their roles as leaders of an evangelical organisation force them to confront the betrayals at the heart of their relationships with one another.

Couple Marcus and Abby are well-to-do Notting Hill types: he a corporate lawyer, she a full time volunteer for 'The Course'.  Their friends, ambitionless university librarian Mouse and damaged, depressed PhD student Lee (to whom Mouse is hopelessly devoted) are, on the face of things, unlikely candidates to peddle the moral absolutes of Christian doctrine. But it's the collapse of the outwardly self-sufficient Marcus's faith and its apparent reconstruction that are at the centre of the story.    

New members of the church are cultivated over several months culminating in the Course's annual retreat. During this weekend at the mansion of one of the course's shady business backers, one of the four friends disappears and each of those who remain is eventually implicated. As they struggle to return to normality the place of the Course in their lives shifts from crutch to yoke. The ambitions of its founders are bigger than any one of them and they must all weigh up the demands of their consciences against their loyalty to the sect.

In the second half it begins to read like a thriller, raising then thwarting our expectations of where the plot will turn next. Preston has knack for placing his characters in memorable, almost filmic settings which stick in the reader's mind's eye. The subject matter feels unoriginal though and scenes of religious ecstasy against the backdrop hymns played by the friends' five piece Christian soft rock band often fail to convince.  But if it's an intelligent interrogation of modern religious belief and the pack mentality you're after, with a consuming plot, then this may be the novel for you.