A universal story of love, family and betrayal, John the Revelator is narrated in the compelling voice of an introverted, watchful adolescent, John Devine. Stuck in a small town, worried over by his single mother - the chain-smoking, bible-quoting Lily - and the gregarious but sinister Mrs Nagle, he yearns for escape. When Jamey Corboy, a self-styled Rimbaudian boy-wonder, arrives in town, John's life suddenly fills with possibilities - welcome and otherwise - and as he hides from the reality of his mother's ever-worsening health, he is faced with a terrible dilemma.
Brilliantly evoking all the frustrations and pent-up energy of a parochial adolescence, John the Revelator also gradually becomes the story of Lily herself, and the secrets of her past. Suffused with eerie imagery, black humour and told in hypnotic prose, John the Revelator is a novel to fall in love with.
- ISBN10 0151014027
- ISBN13 9780151014026
- Publish Date 1 August 2009 (first published 5 February 2009)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 9 July 2021
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Houghton Mifflin
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 254
- Language English