What do you think?
Rate this book
Revenant
An unforgettable novel about friendship, betrayal and memory In a remote Welsh village by the sea, four friends grow up together. Plain but charismatic Del is the ringleader, unstoppable, supremely confident in her ability to get her own way. Neil, shy and stuttering, and Ricky, full of rage and loneliness, are misfits at school until Del takes them under her wing. Steph is the outsider, but she too is mesmerized by Del's devil-may-care approach to life. They hang around together mucking about in the woods, searching for treasure on the seashore, doing dares, sharing cigarettes. Then, one terrible day, the gang is broken up for good. Meeting ten years later in the now stagnating village, Neil, Ricky and Steph revisit their childhood haunts and re-live the memories that have cast a shadow over each of their lives. Del is, by turns, the beating heart at the centre of all their stories and a gaping absence. Set against the backdrop of the northern Welsh coast, and told through the voices of Neil, Ricky and Steph the children left behind Revenant pieces together their memories of childhoods broken by desertion, absence and death, and uncovers the secrets and betrayals of childhood friendships, with thoughtful, shocking brilliance.
250 pages, Paperback
First published January 26, 2012
1 person is currently reading
55 people want to read
About the author
Tristan Hughes
11 books17 followersTristan Hughes was born in Atikokan, Ontario, and brought up on the Welsh island of Ynys Môn. He has a PhD in literature from King’s College, Cambridge, and has taught American literature in Cambridge, Taiwan, Wales and Germany. He won the Rhys Davies Short Story Award in 2002, and his first two novels, The Tower and Send My Cold Bones Home, were highly praised in the U.K. Revenant is his third novel.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 4, 2009
My gut reaction to this book: "Wow, this guy spent a lot of time figuring out to how to describe things."
Maybe it's a shallow statement, especially coming from a writer, but it's true. Revenant made me think about how literary fiction tends to put more emphasis on lyrical descriptions than other genres. And along with that, you get all these characters that are apparently not only observant, but verbose in their observations. A certain amount of description is necessary in any book; literary fiction runs the risk of introducing so many trite phrases that the book becomes a bundle of intense adjectives connected by some common nouns, populated by characters who apparently all have English degrees.
Revenant succeeds in presenting the same scenes differently from the perspectives of different characters. Quantity of lyrical descriptions aside, Tristan Hughes does establish a distinct voice for each of Neil, Ricky, and Steph. So when any two of them described the same scene, it would be laced with different prejudices, different assumptions, and different observations. Neil saw Mr. Jones in a sympathetic light while Ricky viewed him as an arrogant, shambling old man. This is something that really intrigued me and kept me reading even when the book felt slow.
Part of that slowness is an endemic quality owing to the book's setting and themes. Taking place on a small Welsh island, Revenant is retrospective and introspective. It's has very little action, and the action that does take place is motivated by internal conflict more than any external force. Any substance in the book comes from those conflicts, and from how the characters work through them as individuals, alone. (Because none of these people talk. They just don't. They spend the entire book not talking.)
Childhood can be traumatic, and Revenant captures that feeling perfectly. It has a traumatic event, yes, but it's also the way in which the characters, who are now adults, look back on their childhood in general. With distance between the past and the present, the characters pass judgement and form conscious opinions as to how their childhood influenced their lives. Now they've come together after years apart, years that have changed them, and we see them try to finally come to terms with that trauma.
There's plenty of observations the characters make that I found valid. I especially enjoyed Ricky's reflections on how time doesn't diminish the feeling of intimacy between truly good friends—ten years ago can feel like ten hours ago between good friends. Some of the observations feel a little too valid, as if the characters have been moulded into certain mindsets and told what people whom they represent would say a certain thing. Again, Ricky, as the wandering, unfulfilled adult who never quite grew into maturity, fits this description.
We never do get much detail on what the characters were doing between childhood and the present-day part of the book. Neil stayed on the island; Steph presumably went to the mainland. Ricky was "away." This gap in the narrative lends itself to the characters as representatives of types of people rather than actual persons, something that mars the otherwise poignant microcosm that Hughes creates on this island. The characters are mouthpieces, not people, and every time I read a book like that, I get a sudden desire to pick up something by John Irving. There's a man who knows how to weave emotional truth into a fulfilling story and create real, living characters.
Revenant is an origami piece of a story: beautiful but fragile. It's an interesting execution of the same old ideas and themes that we see in retrospects of one's childhood, to the point that I'd almost say the themes are executed too well. It's skilfully and exquisitely written but doesn't take any thematic risks, choosing instead to play it safe.
Maybe it's a shallow statement, especially coming from a writer, but it's true. Revenant made me think about how literary fiction tends to put more emphasis on lyrical descriptions than other genres. And along with that, you get all these characters that are apparently not only observant, but verbose in their observations. A certain amount of description is necessary in any book; literary fiction runs the risk of introducing so many trite phrases that the book becomes a bundle of intense adjectives connected by some common nouns, populated by characters who apparently all have English degrees.
Revenant succeeds in presenting the same scenes differently from the perspectives of different characters. Quantity of lyrical descriptions aside, Tristan Hughes does establish a distinct voice for each of Neil, Ricky, and Steph. So when any two of them described the same scene, it would be laced with different prejudices, different assumptions, and different observations. Neil saw Mr. Jones in a sympathetic light while Ricky viewed him as an arrogant, shambling old man. This is something that really intrigued me and kept me reading even when the book felt slow.
Part of that slowness is an endemic quality owing to the book's setting and themes. Taking place on a small Welsh island, Revenant is retrospective and introspective. It's has very little action, and the action that does take place is motivated by internal conflict more than any external force. Any substance in the book comes from those conflicts, and from how the characters work through them as individuals, alone. (Because none of these people talk. They just don't. They spend the entire book not talking.)
Childhood can be traumatic, and Revenant captures that feeling perfectly. It has a traumatic event, yes, but it's also the way in which the characters, who are now adults, look back on their childhood in general. With distance between the past and the present, the characters pass judgement and form conscious opinions as to how their childhood influenced their lives. Now they've come together after years apart, years that have changed them, and we see them try to finally come to terms with that trauma.
There's plenty of observations the characters make that I found valid. I especially enjoyed Ricky's reflections on how time doesn't diminish the feeling of intimacy between truly good friends—ten years ago can feel like ten hours ago between good friends. Some of the observations feel a little too valid, as if the characters have been moulded into certain mindsets and told what people whom they represent would say a certain thing. Again, Ricky, as the wandering, unfulfilled adult who never quite grew into maturity, fits this description.
We never do get much detail on what the characters were doing between childhood and the present-day part of the book. Neil stayed on the island; Steph presumably went to the mainland. Ricky was "away." This gap in the narrative lends itself to the characters as representatives of types of people rather than actual persons, something that mars the otherwise poignant microcosm that Hughes creates on this island. The characters are mouthpieces, not people, and every time I read a book like that, I get a sudden desire to pick up something by John Irving. There's a man who knows how to weave emotional truth into a fulfilling story and create real, living characters.
Revenant is an origami piece of a story: beautiful but fragile. It's an interesting execution of the same old ideas and themes that we see in retrospects of one's childhood, to the point that I'd almost say the themes are executed too well. It's skilfully and exquisitely written but doesn't take any thematic risks, choosing instead to play it safe.
February 13, 2025
Pretty good, I rushed towards the end 🤓
June 15, 2016
I really wanted to like this book more than I did. It is just too obvious in what it is trying to do and reminded me of something an intelligent high school student might write before denouncing his own work as too trite. It's lyrical in a way that is sometimes beautiful but all I can think is that it is just TOO OBVIOUS. However, I did feel a fondness for the characters, particularly Ricky and Del. Hughes doesn't come across as a fully matured writer and I like to think his writing has improved since this book... but I'm not really interested enough to find out.
March 24, 2019
This book is 10 years old, and looks like Tristan Hughes's first novel. I love his books, but this one was confusing and a let down. There were too many narrators and not enough tension or emotions in it. I will buy his next book though since his latest books are so good.
November 2, 2015
Often the most interesting reading experiences come from books you know nothing about in advance. This is the story of four friends who grow up in a small, remote Welsh town. All are "misfits" and we readers are given road-maps to the various reasons why circumstances brings them together. None of them would likely ever have become friends if it weren't for their unofficial leader, Del - a gregarious, charismatic girl who seemingly doesn't care what others think...who goes her own way, but who shows surprising empathy with her friends. In adolescence, one experiences anger, hungers, frustration, loneliness and fear. When you live in a remote area, there's only so much one can do for fun, but these friends manage to muck about on the shore and in the fields and forests. As life changes, so does their friendship. But, one day, everything changes irrevocably.
Ten years later, the friends reunite and revisit the places that were so important in their youth causing memories and unresolved emotions that each thought were buried to resurface. As the blurb on the cover of the version I have says "Del is the beating heart at the centre of their stories." What happens in her life echoes across all of their lives.
The novel takes us back and forth - between the present and the past - and weaves a tale of memories, betrayals and secrets in a brilliant and beautiful use of the English language. Although not an 'uplifting' story, this novel was a pleasure to read.
Ten years later, the friends reunite and revisit the places that were so important in their youth causing memories and unresolved emotions that each thought were buried to resurface. As the blurb on the cover of the version I have says "Del is the beating heart at the centre of their stories." What happens in her life echoes across all of their lives.
The novel takes us back and forth - between the present and the past - and weaves a tale of memories, betrayals and secrets in a brilliant and beautiful use of the English language. Although not an 'uplifting' story, this novel was a pleasure to read.
September 24, 2008
Seems to me like someone has been reading too much of Stephen King's "It". This may be not fair but probably it's because I love "It" too much I can't help but thinking this book reads like an attempt to retell "It" in a different culture context, without the horror stuff and without the epic feel. In fact without any feel. Some nice observations about how does it feel to come home after being away, how the "home" attracts you in a bizzare way even though there was always much to hate about it. The author's previous book, The Tower, handled this "homecoming" theme much better, though, in fact brilliantly. So I recommend The Tower instead.
April 24, 2017
OK - an excellent use of words, but it didn't go anywhere for me.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews