Revival
In a small New England town over half a century ago, a boy is playing with his new toy soldiers in the dirt when he looks up to see a striking man, the new minister, Jamie learns later he is a man who with his beautiful wife will transform the church and the town. The men and boys are a bit in love with Mrs. Jacobs; the women and girls, with the Reverend Jacobs -- including Jamie's sisters and mother. Then tragedy strikes, and this charismatic preacher curses God, and is banished from the shocked town. Jamie has demons of his own. Wed to his guitar from age 13, he plays in bands across the country, running from his own family tragedies, losing one job after another when his addictions get the better of him. Decades later, sober and living a decent life, he and Reverend Charles Jacobs meet again in a pact beyond even the Devil's devising, and the many terrifying meanings of Revival are revealed. King imbues this spectacularly rich and dark novel with everything he knows about music, addiction, and religious fanaticism, and every nightmare we ever had about death.
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2014–2023years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Fiction:
Permutation City - Greg Egan
Revival - Stephen King
Glasshouse - Charles Stross
The City - Dean Koontz
Non-fiction:
Predictable Revenue - Aaron Ross
How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World - Steven Johnson
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation - Jon Gertner
How Doctors Think - Jerome Groopman
Frankenstein's Cat: Cuddling Up To Biotech's Brave New Beasts - Emily Anthes
Zero to One - Peter Thiel
- The Four Steps To The Epiphany - Steve Blank
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Predictable Revenue - Aaron Ross, Marylou Tyler
The Fountainhead - Ayn Rand
The Ultimate Question 2.0 - Fred Reichheld
The Singularity is Near - Ray Kurzweil
Moonshot! - John Sculley
Zero To One - Peter Thiel
Republic - Plato
Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell
Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
The Mysterious Island - Jules Verne
Discipline of Market Leaders - Michael Treacy, Fred Wiersema
False Memory - Dean Koontz
NOS4A2- Joe Hill
Revival - Stephen King
Barbarians At The Gate - John Helyar and Bryan Burrough
Into Thin Air - John Krakauer
How To Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard
and any collection of the works of H.P. Lovecraft.
- You might notice that this whole Mr. Electro schtick is the core of the Stephen King novel Revival, with an ending that was quite unlike his usual; King has always had a huge yen for all things Bradbury.
