John the Revelator
By (Author) Peter Murphy
Faber & Faber
Faber & Faber
18th December 2009
Main
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.92
Paperback
272
Width 126mm, Height 198mm, Spine 17mm
220g
John Devine yearns for escape. Stuck in a small town, he's worried over by his chain-smoking, bible-quoting single mother Lily and the sinister Mrs Nagle. So when Jamey Corboy, a self-styled boy-wonder, arrives in town, John's life suddenly fills with possibilities. But as they dream and scheme is John simply hiding from the reality of his mother's ill health, and the terrible dilemma that awaits him 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.
Peter Murphy is a senior writer for Dublin's Hot Press, and has contributed to Rolling Stone and Music Week. He is also a regular guest on RTE's arts review show The View, and has contributed liner notes to the forthcoming remastered edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music.