I believe Revival is the most recently written Stephen King novel I’ve read. It was pretty good—it certainly scores high on the religion and horror scale, although it takes quite a while to get to the horror part. Part of the problem for me is that I liked Charles Daniel Jacobs. I tended to relate more to him than to Jamie Morton (the narrator/protagonist). Perhaps this was because, like Jacobs, I studied to be a Methodist minister. And like him, came to have a rather different view of what is really going on in the world. He’s clearly King’s villain, however. Or “fifth business” as he’s termed in the novel. The secret lightning he seeks turns out to be a kind of MacGuffin. I was curious to know more about it. The novel, as is typical, has several subplots but the main one is how Jamie and Charlie face what’s after death in a tragic climax.
Charlie starts out as a Methodist preacher. When his wife and son are tragically killed, he becomes a huckster who actually has tapped into an electrical power that can heal people. It often, however, leaves bad aftereffects. Jamie, who knew him as a kid, is cured by him from a heroin addiction. Their paths continue to cross over the next fifty years or so—this is a longitudinal story—as Jamie comes more and more to distrust his childhood hero. Charlie can use electricity to perform wonders and it make him rich. He wants more, however. He wants to see beyond death to assure himself that his wife and son are in a better place. It seems to me that that motivation isn’t a bad one. The only way he seems a villain is that he doesn’t really care for other people.
The story is well told but it doesn’t have the same “classic” feel as some of King’s earlier novels. He well understands, however, that horror and religion belong together. I haven’t read all of his novels—not by a long shot—but clergy aren’t rare and when they’re present they’re implicated in the horrors, or in this case, responsible for them. These are important insights, as others have also noticed. Revival is one of those books that requires some reflection. It certainly feels like something written by a man facing the limitations of the aging process. And not necessarily at peace with it. Ministers sometimes do go bad—they’re only human—but they can also lead to real change. I, for one, am interested to hear what King has to say about it.
