John the Revelator

Synopsis

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.