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I think Revival
benefits from not knowing much going in, so I’ll be vague about the plot over the cut. It’s an uneven book, extremely gripping and with some interesting themes, with a fantastic beginning and an ending that would have really worked for me if it had made some choices other than the ones it actually made.
For most of the book, the horror elements are backgrounded rather than foregrounded. The first third, which begins with the narrator’s childhood meeting with the new young preacher, who has an interest in electricity and departs under a cloud, is absolutely riveting even though for most of it, nothing particularly dramatic is happening. It’s beautifully written, vivid, and has a masterful use of foreshadowing. (The “cloud” does not involve child abuse. However, there is child death.)
The middle of the book, which follows Jamie into adulthood, is also compelling reading, with some genuinely scary moments. The climax went in a direction that didn’t work for me.
It’s hard to either rec or anti-rec this without spoilers. It’s extremely gripping, has some great moments of subtle horror, and is very beautifully written for the most part. For much of its length, it could be a mainstream novel with magic realist touches, about the inexorable passage of time and age, what we gain and what we lose and what we only realize in retrospect, and whether there’s anybody out there but us. The fantastical elements have one strand that really worked for me but I suspect comes across as totally ridiculous to some readers, and another that did not work for me at all but I suspect really worked for some readers. So, caveat emptor. I really enjoyed reading it but I wouldn’t rank it as a favorite King; I’d suggest reading the first chapter and seeing if it grabs you.
Huge spoilers.
The fantastical element that I liked was the “secret electricity.” It’s scientifically absurd but it fit with the settings and themes: the young man building things in his basement, the carnival where the blatant fakery disguises the reality beneath, the old-schoolness of it in a book that’s largely about ageing and the passage of time. I also found its details and uses really vivid and fascinating. “Something happened” was genuinely scary, as was the door covered in ivy.
The fantastical element I did not like was that the absolute worst and most terrifying thing, the Greatest Horror of Horrors, was… an Old One and giant ants. Whenever I hit surprise!Lovecraft, my reaction is not to shudder, but to roll my eyes. I’ve read individual Lovecraftian stories that I liked, but I just do not find the mythos scary and in fact find it hard to buy into on an emotional level, so for me, its introduction distances me rather than drawing me in. Also, ants are scary because a million tiny ones could eat you bite by bite. Giant ants are less scary to me than regular ones. So the Ultimate Horror felt flat for me. Similar to IT, where Pennywise scared me way more than a giant spider ever could. Maybe I’m just not into big bugs.
The idea that death is not the end but a gateway to unending horror is a genuinely disturbing concept. It’s just that the nature of the horror fell flat for me. If it was being conscious but lost in an endless void, like “The Jaunt,” or eternally trapped in the pain of your death moment, until you go insane and then you just stay insane and still suffering forever, that would have made it a reveal to give me nightmares.
benefits from not knowing much going in, so I’ll be vague about the plot over the cut. It’s an uneven book, extremely gripping and with some interesting themes, with a fantastic beginning and an ending that would have really worked for me if it had made some choices other than the ones it actually made. For most of the book, the horror elements are backgrounded rather than foregrounded. The first third, which begins with the narrator’s childhood meeting with the new young preacher, who has an interest in electricity and departs under a cloud, is absolutely riveting even though for most of it, nothing particularly dramatic is happening. It’s beautifully written, vivid, and has a masterful use of foreshadowing. (The “cloud” does not involve child abuse. However, there is child death.)
The middle of the book, which follows Jamie into adulthood, is also compelling reading, with some genuinely scary moments. The climax went in a direction that didn’t work for me.
It’s hard to either rec or anti-rec this without spoilers. It’s extremely gripping, has some great moments of subtle horror, and is very beautifully written for the most part. For much of its length, it could be a mainstream novel with magic realist touches, about the inexorable passage of time and age, what we gain and what we lose and what we only realize in retrospect, and whether there’s anybody out there but us. The fantastical elements have one strand that really worked for me but I suspect comes across as totally ridiculous to some readers, and another that did not work for me at all but I suspect really worked for some readers. So, caveat emptor. I really enjoyed reading it but I wouldn’t rank it as a favorite King; I’d suggest reading the first chapter and seeing if it grabs you.
Huge spoilers.
The fantastical element that I liked was the “secret electricity.” It’s scientifically absurd but it fit with the settings and themes: the young man building things in his basement, the carnival where the blatant fakery disguises the reality beneath, the old-schoolness of it in a book that’s largely about ageing and the passage of time. I also found its details and uses really vivid and fascinating. “Something happened” was genuinely scary, as was the door covered in ivy.
The fantastical element I did not like was that the absolute worst and most terrifying thing, the Greatest Horror of Horrors, was… an Old One and giant ants. Whenever I hit surprise!Lovecraft, my reaction is not to shudder, but to roll my eyes. I’ve read individual Lovecraftian stories that I liked, but I just do not find the mythos scary and in fact find it hard to buy into on an emotional level, so for me, its introduction distances me rather than drawing me in. Also, ants are scary because a million tiny ones could eat you bite by bite. Giant ants are less scary to me than regular ones. So the Ultimate Horror felt flat for me. Similar to IT, where Pennywise scared me way more than a giant spider ever could. Maybe I’m just not into big bugs.
The idea that death is not the end but a gateway to unending horror is a genuinely disturbing concept. It’s just that the nature of the horror fell flat for me. If it was being conscious but lost in an endless void, like “The Jaunt,” or eternally trapped in the pain of your death moment, until you go insane and then you just stay insane and still suffering forever, that would have made it a reveal to give me nightmares.
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I also find eternal damnation or any bad afterlife really scary, also due to childhood issues. I had my parents and their cult telling me that after death some essence of me would live on eternally but my personality would be erased, which I found HORRIFYING, and the nuns at my abusive Catholic school telling me I'd go to Hell. So Revival should have been much scarier to me than it was.
I love Robertson Davies. He has a very specific point of view and some strange opinions, including on Womanhood, but makes up for it by writing some really great female characters.
He has two trilogies; in both, oddly, the middle book is the best. They both involve myth in the contemporary world, and have touches of magic realism. The Deptford trilogy starts with Fifth Business but my favorite book is the middle one, The Manticore, about Jungian analysis and the roots of myth. It made me expect reading Jung himself to be fascinating. (Jung is totally impenetrable.) The third book is about a spooky carnival. The Cornish trilogy is about art and academia, art forgery and spying and the production of an ambitious opera about King Arthur. The first book has some very funny parts but is not my favorite; the second book is wonderful; the third book is also really funny, has fantastic backstage drama (it's mostly about producing the opera) and has really great lesbian and bisexual characters. (The first book has major gay and bisexual characters, but not depicted in a flattering way, though I did enjoy the bisexual antihero.)