This first novel by Benjamin Wood, former fiction editor of the journal Prism International, is accomplished, atmospheric, and suspenseful – once it builds up some steam, that is.

Oscar is a lonely, unfulfilled, working-class personal-care assistant at an old-age home in Cambridge, England, when he meets Iris Bellwether, a privileged undergraduate. For no good reason they fall in love, and Iris enlists Oscar in trying to determine whether her older brother, Eden, is in need of psychiatric help. Eden is a musical genius who believes he can cure sickness with the music he plays on church organs.

After an uneasy start, Oscar is inducted into the close-knit, incestuous group of friends surrounding Iris and Eden, and even into the Bellwether household. This becomes dangerous when Eden employs Oscar as a subject to prove his miraculous abilities: under a form of hypnosis, Eden drives a nail through Oscar’s finger.

In true suspense-novel fashion, the stakes continue to rise as Iris and Oscar bring in a specialist in God complex disorders to diagnose whether Eden is really sick, or an actual miracle worker. All this takes place against the background of an idyllic Cambridge undergraduate experience – the students are worried only about their exams, never about their finances, and cheerfully enjoy the rewards of privilege.

Wood’s prose attains the high level of craft we expect from literary novels, but his pacing leaves something to be desired. There is an enormous amount of description involving landscapes, attitudes, and physical objects, but little of it is actually necessary. And although we spend a lot of time with these characters, they don’t add up to fully realized people. Eden, who is the crux of the book, and to whom the most analysis is devoted, is little more than another portrait of the clichéd mad artist. And it’s hard to believe that Oscar, or any working-class character, would put up with so much from the toffs he comes to love. Once we’ve actually arrived at the culmination of the story, Wood is quite good at keeping us on the edge of our seats, even though the suspense consists for the most part in the characters just standing around arguing.

Readers who appreciate a leisurely paced story shot through with mystery and tension will likely enjoy this book. Those looking for depth of character and originality may not.