Rating: ****
Tags: Fiction, Thrillers, Suspense, Literary, Horror, Lang:en
Summary
A dark and electrifying novel about addiction, fanaticism,
and what might exist on the other side of life. In a small New England town, over half a century ago, a
shadow falls over a small boy playing with his toy soldiers.
Jamie Morton looks up to see a striking man, the new minister.
Charles Jacobs, along with his beautiful wife, will transform
the local church. The men and boys are all a bit in love with
Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls feel the same about Reverend
Jacobs—including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister,
Claire. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond based on
a secret obsession. When tragedy strikes the Jacobs family,
this charismatic preacher curses God, mocks all religious
belief, and is banished from the shocked town. Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from the age
of thirteen, he plays in bands across the country, living the
nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll while fleeing from
his family’s horrific loss. In his
mid-thirties—addicted to heroin, stranded,
desperate—Jamie meets Charles Jacobs again, with profound
consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond
even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that
revival has many meanings. This rich and disturbing novel spans five decades on its way
to the most terrifying conclusion Stephen King has ever
written. It’s a masterpiece from King, in the great
American tradition of Frank Norris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and
Edgar Allan Poe. **
An Amazon Best Book of the Month, November
2014: How does Stephen King do it? In book after book,
writing long (
Under the Dome,
11/22/63) or short (
Joyland) he manages, nearly always, to tell a
compelling story that is both entertaining and somehow
profound, or at least thoughtful. His latest,
Revival, is vintage King. It’s the perfect mix
of baby boomer nostalgia (think
Stand By Me) – this guy remembers the 60s with
details you usually can only find in photographs – and
good old American horror, the kind that was first elevated by
such minor writers as, say, Poe and Hawthorne. The story here
centers on a reverend who comes to a New England town,
befriends and mentors a young boy, and then goes wild with
grief when his family dies in an accident; he gives a
blasphemous sermon and is, basically, run out of town. Cut to:
a couple decades later, when the boy, now a junkie, meets up by
chance with the disgraced clergyman, and they form another
disturbing relationship. Reverend Jacobs, it turns out, was
always more complicated than the stereotypical man of God
– he is fascinated by electricity, by science – and
pretty demonic, too. How he and Jamie find and fight each other
over their lifetimes is as shocking and inevitable as the
explosive and, yes, horrorish, climax of the book. Never mind
that King’s prose can sometimes lapse into laughable
cliché – “like water through a sieve”?
Really? – there is absolutely no better storyteller than
Stephen King, who keeps us up at night, with fear and
fascination and admiration.
–Sara Nelson
“Spellbinding…King is a master at invoking the
supernatural through the powerful emotions of his characters,
and his depiction of Jacobs as a man unhinged by grief but
driven by insatiable scientific curiosity is as believable as
it is frightening. The novel’s ending – one of
King’s best – stuns like lightning.” (
Publishers Weekly (starred review))Amazon.com Review
Review