A spectacularly dark and electrifying novel about addiction, religion, music, and what might exist on the other side of life. 
In a small New England town, in the early ’60s, 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 – including Jamie’s mother and beloved sister – feel the same about Reverend Jacobs. With Jamie, the Reverend shares a deeper bond, based on their fascination with simple experiments in electricity. 
Then tragedy strikes the Jacobs family, the preacher curses God, mocking all religious belief, and is banished from the shocked town. 
Jamie has demons of his own. In his mid-30s, he is living a nomadic lifestyle of bar-band rock and roll. Addicted to heroin, stranded, desperate, he sees Jacobs again – a showman on stage, creating dazzling ‘portraits in lightning’ – and their meeting has profound consequences for both men. Their bond becomes a pact beyond even the Devil’s devising, and Jamie discovers that revival has many meanings. Because for every cure there is a price….

IN A NUTSHELL
I don’t think of Stephen King as a Horror writer. Most of what I enjoy about his work has nothing to do with getting the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up in fear of some supernatural evil. I enjoy how clearly he sees the world, how well he tells a story, keeping it human, making the people real, and always willing to show how monstrous and how wonderful people can be. ‘Revival’ hits the sweet spot for me. The writing drew me in, like the lure of live music well played. The people are vividly drawn. The story is about small triumphs and big tragedies. There are moments of beauty, happiness, and hope, and scenes of self-degradation, exploitation, and ruthless nihilism. The supernatural element is more in the nature of speculative fiction rather than being fright fodder. ‘Revival’ is now one of my favourite Stephen King books. 

‘Revival‘ is the life story of Jamie Morton, who we first meet in 1962 as a six-year-old, playing in the dirt with his toy soldiers when the shadow of the young, charismatic Reverend Jacobs falls over him. One way or another, Jamie spends the rest of his life in that shadow. As we follow Jamie from his boyhood into his sixties, we see his life constantly being reshaped by encounters with the Rev, who Jamie thinks of as his Fifth Business.

Both men are damaged, the Rev by grief at the loss of his family and his faith, and Jamie by his addiction to drugs. Both men are driven by a curiosity that becomes a compulsion. Both are tied together by the use of what’s described as ‘Secret Electricity’, a force that the Rev spends decades researching. 

I was totally immersed in Jamie’s life. Stephen King’s writing was beautiful and compelling, even when the things being written about were ugly or unpleasant. He describes the happiness of being included at a big family gathering and the physical depravity of the daily life on an addict equally vividly.

Jamie felt real to me. His story was, in retrospect, a sort of confession, offered partly as an act of atonement for how he lived his life. The writing was equally vivid when recalling the happy and sometimes traumatic days of his childhood, the dark, self-destructive days of his abasement by drugs, his enduring relationship with music, his loves, his friendships, and the mistakes that poisoned his life. 

I loved the ambiguity of the ‘power’ that the Rev wields. It could be science. It could be trickery. It’s probably both. What’s certain is that that power changed something inside Jamie, tainting everything he saw and did after that with the possibility of mental illness, or of revelation, or of accurate remembrance. 

As with many of King’s novels, the monsters in this book are mostly human, and they are not uniformly monstrous. I can see that the depiction of Revivalist Tent meetings as more carnival act than Christian communion might upset some people, but this isn’t a general attack on religion, just a look at how one man uses it for his own purposes. The understanding of death and what follows it, which comes to dominate Jamie’s perception, is bleak and very far from Christian. Whether it is real or not doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s as real to Jamie as the possibility of Heaven is to a true believer.

I recommend the audiobook version of ‘Revival‘. David Morse’s narration was pitch-perfect. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

Here’s an interview with Stephen King about what influenced him to write ‘Revival‘.