Book description
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.
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. He lives in Dublin.
