Mr. Mercedes is supposed to be a mystery -- and Revival is supposed to be, well, something else. It's King's new "dark" novel. It has the tone of King's novella, 1922. But it also has a great deal of mystery in it. What's up with Rev. Jacobs? That is the mystery. It's what keeps us coming back, wanting to know more.
After we discover he has the power to heal, the reader wants to know how. I've always been interested in "faith" healers and how they pull their stunts. Partly because so many people I know, people I love, are easily taken in by religious shysters and shenanigans. TV preachers and tent revivals with the big sign out front, "HEALING SERVICE" are of great suspicion to me. In fact, I'd suggest that one of the great wounds to Christianity is the showman preachers who use the Gospel as a platform for making money. But more about that in later posts.
They mystery at the mid-point and just beyond of Revival is three fold: How is Jacobs healing all those people, why do things sometimes go "bad" for the healed, and what happened to Jacobs? I don't know the answer to any of those things at the moment, because I'm still plodding. And here's the thing, I'm interested in the answer to all those things.
King does a great job ruling out early suspicions on the healing service. No, he is not just using plants. And yes, he really does seem to be healing these people. But is he maybe doing more? Is he actually experimenting on them? Is something else going on that the reader has not been let in on? Well, of course!
It is King's ability to turn a good mystery, to keep enough elements up in the air like a great juggler, that has me fascinated. Now, here's a small confession. If this were an author I'd not heard of, I'd be concerned that he'd bit off more than he could chew. There are too many questions to resolve in the number of pages ahead. Can he do it? Will the answers be lame? But this is Stephen King. And there is a sense in which I keep reading simply because I know he will work some magic when the curtain is pulled back.
In some ways, Revival is a better mystery than Mr. Mercedes. In Mr. Mercedes, we got a peak in at the criminal mastermind at work. In Revival, things are more limited. We don't get Jacobs perspective, so we are kept in suspense.
There is a slight change in writing style for King in Revival. In the past King built a book scene by scene, the way a television show would progress. In Revival, and other recent books, King does a lot of narration that skims over scenes, simply pushing the plot forward. He's "telling" instead of "showing" a writer friend of mine would say. And that's pretty easy to do when using first person narration. I like it, because I don't always want to travel scene my scene.
And where's another confession; while King might identify with Jamie, I don't. In fact, I find Jamie a pretty unlikable character. Is it his sleeping with a much younger woman? Maybe it is. King works pretty hard to make us, the reader, cool with the older man sleeping with the younger woman. It's a delightful fling for him, and a educational step into the world for her. But it feels unreal. I don't think younger woman just throw themselves at older guys and say, "yeah, I have daddy issues." Maybe. But I talk to A LOT of people, and that's not the way that goes down.
The bottomline is, I see Jamie as a user. He uses women, he sues drugs, he uses opportunity to advance himself. So it makes me suspicious of his desire to hunt down the old reverend and find out what he's really up to. I don't think our main character is really all that noble. King is working to show Jamie as someone who doesn't have the wool pulled over his eyes; but what he gives us is a loser.
I'm secretly rooting for King to pull a Christine on us, move from first person to third person and knock Jamie off.
But here's the deal: It's all enough to keep me interested, and that's what matters in a novel, isn't it? I'm driven back again and again to Revival because I want to know what's up.
I should note why I'm SO SLOW at reading this book. I only allow myself to listen to it when I go running at night. It's my motivation. Sometimes I can do five miles, I just keep choosing longer routes, because I'm hooked. So it keeps me from skipping too many nights on the road exercising. It also slows the pace.
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