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verkisto's review
4.0
Tem's background was in social work, and that is most evident here in this book, which is an examination of grief and how it affects people. She created a story that features a half-dozen or more character sketches of different people experiencing their own versions of grief: a mother whose children died young; an elderly woman who grieves the loss of her husband to Alzheimer's; a father whose son, once a strapping example of what he considers masculinity, is now a quadriplegic. She examines the loss of the living and those still alive, and the pieces are fascinating and compelling.
(Tem creates a couple of characters who grieve the loss of something they never should have had, and takes us up close and personal to some terrible people. It's distressing, uncomfortable, and horrifying, because even those sketches are fascinating and compelling in their own ways.)
The message of the book is clear: Come to terms with your grief, or it will kill you. Ghosts have always represented the grief people feel over lost loved ones, but Tem takes the concept a step further and has the ghosts live in a ghost town in the midwest. They can return and interact with those who grieve them, and they lead them to the town -- Revenant -- when they can no longer deal with representing that grief. There, they're forced to confront their own feelings or suffer the consequences.
The book doesn't follow the typical structure of a novel. The initial chapters are the character sketches, where we get to know the ghosts and those keeping them in Revenant. Once we're introduced to those characters, we enter the town of Revenant where everyone interacts with each other and faces their emotions. It's unusual, but it works remarkably well.
Revenant will gut you like a well-written horror novel should. I don't know if I would recommend it to just anyone (at the very least, there's at least one trigger warning one should issue before giving it to someone to read), but it's a brilliant story that will haunt you after you turn the last page.
(Tem creates a couple of characters who grieve the loss of something they never should have had, and takes us up close and personal to some terrible people. It's distressing, uncomfortable, and horrifying, because even those sketches are fascinating and compelling in their own ways.)
The message of the book is clear: Come to terms with your grief, or it will kill you. Ghosts have always represented the grief people feel over lost loved ones, but Tem takes the concept a step further and has the ghosts live in a ghost town in the midwest. They can return and interact with those who grieve them, and they lead them to the town -- Revenant -- when they can no longer deal with representing that grief. There, they're forced to confront their own feelings or suffer the consequences.
The book doesn't follow the typical structure of a novel. The initial chapters are the character sketches, where we get to know the ghosts and those keeping them in Revenant. Once we're introduced to those characters, we enter the town of Revenant where everyone interacts with each other and faces their emotions. It's unusual, but it works remarkably well.
Revenant will gut you like a well-written horror novel should. I don't know if I would recommend it to just anyone (at the very least, there's at least one trigger warning one should issue before giving it to someone to read), but it's a brilliant story that will haunt you after you turn the last page.
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