I just finished reading The Revenant, the 2002 novel by Michael Punke which inspired the 2015 movie of the same name. One reviewer described the novel as “plainspoken” and I found this to be true. The style of writing struck me as old fashioned, in that it felt like books written in the fifties and sixties that I’d read as a child. It reads more like a biography than a novel, and a few chapters in I paused to check that it actually was a novel. The narrative voice is omniscient, moving from the head of one character to another without hesitation or transition, and several times moving from one time and place to another without so much as a helpful blank line to cue the reader.

All that said, I found The Revenant to be captivating.

Long before I was interested in science fiction, I had a childhood passion for frontier fiction, and reading The Revenant has been a welcome chance to revisit that — and to discover that I am just as fascinated now by the vast and amazing landscapes of the American West, and by the dangers and the clash of cultures on the American frontier. In short, my love of adventure fiction began early, and I have never outgrown it.

If you haven’t yet seen the movie (I haven’t!), The Revenent is the story of frontiersman Hugh Glass who was horribly mauled by a grizzly and then abandoned by his companions when they feared an attack by Arikara warriors was imminent. It depicts a level of strength and endurance that feels almost superhuman to us feeble modern folk, and it depicts in fairly good detail a way of life long gone away. If your reading requires women characters, you won’t be pleased with The Revenent. Women are background elements. I’m not sure that even one ever comes on stage.

This is a short novel and in my opinion well worth reading. From a writer’s perspective, it’s good to be reminded that there are many ways to tell a story, and that the scene-by-scene, show-don’t-tell style of modern novels is not the only option. In the end, it’s the story that matters, and the story told by The Revenent has made this novel a success.

Posted on: Saturday, March 5th, 2016 at 7:59 am
Categories: Reading, Recommended Reading.
Tags: frontier fiction, Michael Punke, The Revenant, westerns