John the Revelator

the long version

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, Johns life suddenly fills with possibilities welcome and otherwise and as he hides from the reality of his mothers 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.