Author: Michael Punke
# of Pages: 262 (paperback)
Genre: Fiction, Adventure, Historical Fiction
Rating: ★★★★☆
Synopsis: The year is 1823, and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier life. Trapping beaver, they contend daily with the threat of Indian tribes turned warlike over the white men’s encroachment on their land, and other prairie foes—like the unforgiving landscape and its creatures. Hugh Glass is among the Company’s finest men, an experienced frontiersman and an expert tracker. But when a scouting mission puts him face-to-face with a grizzly bear, he is viciously mauled and not expected to survive. The Company’s captain dispatches two of his men to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies, and to give him the respect of a proper burial. When the two men abandon him instead, taking his only means of protecting himself—including his precious gun and hatchet— with them, Glass is driven to survive by one desire: revenge. With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out crawling inch by inch across more than three thousand miles of uncharted American frontier, negotiating predators both human and not, the threat of starvation, and the agony of his horrific wounds. In Michael Punke’s hauntingly spare and gripping prose, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched to its limits, and the lengths that one man will go to for retribution.
Review: This is not my type of book.
Although I like historical fiction (especially those with a stronger emphasis on the historical and less on the fiction), I have no interest in reading about people venturing through the American frontier. Learning about people "roughing it" is about as appealing as the idea of venturing out into the wilderness myself.
However, in 2015, the movie adaptation came out, and the action-packed trailer convinced me to watch it in theaters. I enjoyed it well enough, but I was grossed out by what Glass had to do to survive. The book was no different, except action scenes are less enjoyable and more chaotic than they are in the movies.
I also realized the movie had swerved away from the plot Punke created to make the movie more interesting to the general public. This is to be expected, but the climax and the fate of Fitzgerald, our antagonist, was completely altered to the point where the message against revenge is weakened. In the movie, Glass is told "revenge is in the Creator's hands" which later influences his actions in regards to achieving his revenge. In the book, Glass has a conversation with Kiowa, who says:
"'Why did you come to the frontier? To track down a common thief? To revel in a moment's revenge? I thought there was more to you than that'" -p.248
The book is clearly against pursuing revenge (many of Glass's life-or-death struggles are folly as he ventures out for revenge instead of exploration) while the movie seems to support it. Although the movie may be more exciting, the book has the better message.
I rated this book four stars because it is well-written, not because I enjoyed it as much as other four star books. However, if you enjoy this kind of topic, I would recommend this book to you.
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