Revival

AFTER the paperback release of Doctor Sleep, a follow-up to The Shining, the ‘master of suspense’, Stephen King, is back with Revival.

We meet the narrator of the book, Jamie Morton, when he is just a small boy in 1960s Maine.

A Methodist minister, Charles Jacobs, arrives in town and appears to heal Jamie’s brother.

But a terrible tragedy befalls the man of God, and he leaves.

Many years later, Jamie and Charles Jacobs cross paths at a county fair.

Jamie is now a drug-addicted session guitarist and Jacobs is travelling with a show of his own.

Since his family was wiped out in a car crash, the former preacher has been travelling around small-town America, professing he can heal the sick via his ’secret electricity’.

The healer uses his special ’powers’ to cure Jamie of his heroin addiction, and sparks the protagonist’s interest.

Just who is this guy, who now calls himself Pastor Danny Jacobs? And is he helping or hurting?

King jumps between decades, in ambling style, and huge swathes of background seem to be missing, which would have increased the horror of what was really going on.