A group of young people are searching for meaning in a dark and directionless world. The Course, a religious movement led by a charismatic priest, seems at first to offer everything the friends have been looking for: a community of bright, thoughtful, beautiful people. But as they are drawn deeper into the Course, money, sex, and God collide, threatening to rip them apart.
This gripping novel of ideas lays bare a world where the advancement of a movement becomes more important than the lives of its followers
Editorial Reviews
Review
‘Alex Preston’s debut novel, This Bleeding City, was published to high acclaim in 2010. It was the first really successful credit crunch novel … the creepy mindset of David Nightingale, who sets out to dominate a group of young and middle-aged people like an American cult leader, makes for a very gripping story … compulsively readable … I was electrified by the oddity of all the characters. At times especially when they are all together on the retreat I thought of Iris Murdoch’s 1958 novel The Bell, about a collection of religious weirdos, and wondered whether Preston would do for the evangelicals of 2012 what Murdoch had done for the tormented high church homosexuals.’ –A.N. Wilson, Financial Times
‘This is a cleverly conceived novel, pitched between commercial and literary. It’s intensely readable and feels honest and authentic in its intentions and execution … Preston’s characters may be preachy (although they have serious misgivings about whether they believe in what they’re saying) but the novelist himself is not. He lets us form our own conclusions about who is to blame for what. This book is intelligently questioning and analytical about religion generally and Christianity specifically.’ Viv Groskop, Observer –Viv Groskop, Observer
‘This is a dark, enticing story with echoes of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History. It is well paced and gripping throughout, even in the difficult middle where a lot of books falter. This is the work of a talented writer with much more to come.’ –Bookmunch.co.uk
Book Description
The new novel from the author of the critically acclaimed This Bleeding City
About the Author
Alex Preston was born in 1979. He lives in London with his wife and two children. His first novel, This Bleeding City, won the Spear’s and Edinburgh Festival first book prizes. Alex is a regular panelist on the BBC Review Show and writes a fortnightly column in the New Statesman. He studied English under Tom Paulin at Hertford College, Oxford.
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