Day 90: Revival by Stephen King

From the archive.

At least in my opinion, if you were to collect all of Stephen King’s books — about 82 at this point — and put the better ones together, then Revival belongs in the better pile. As can be expected, revival refers both to a religious awakening and the idea of bringing a dead body back to life. Many of King’s tropes and themes are found in this book: rock and roll, a small town in northern New England, a carnival with some sort of supernatural connection, and a final battle between good and evil.

There was one passage in the book that did bother me. That was the point on page 276 where the main character, Jamie Morton, a guitar player who is, in a lot of ways, a stand in for King, himself, has a sexual experience with the 24 year old Brianna. She says that she needs to “work out her daddy issues,” but the considerable age difference did make me uncomfortable as I read that section.

While I do not think that Revival is a masterpiece of literary fiction, overall, I found King’s book to be both a page turner and a book with attention paid to story and language construction.

library hardcover. October 2018. 405 pgs.