The Revenant, book review. (Michael Punke)

Okay, so you've seen the film right?

No? Yes? Well, that doesn't really matter because this is quite different. No less dramatic mind but different all the same.

Along with, Eowyn Ivey's, The Snow Child, this is the book you read if you want to know what it feels like to be cold, really, really cold. It is also the book you read if you want to know what it's like to be truly alone. Not sitting alone in a room, or walking the streets at three in the morning alone but I-could-be-the-last-person-on-earth alone, and that feeling of loneliness, of isolation, envelopes you about halfway through this book and wraps you in its cold blanket all the way to the bitter end.
I recently read and blogged about Birdbox, (26/10/19) which makes you feel alone, I've read John Wyndham's, The Day of the Triffids, and Robert Matterson's rather excellent, I am Legend, which leaves you utterly desperate as it concludes, and this book runs it a close second; truly isolating you in ice and snow until you're in need of some good company, a warm fire and a large measure of your favourite tipple.
Based on true events whilst the Americas were still being mapped and discovered by the Europeans, the story centres around the fur trade, animal pelts, and on one expedition in particular, where Hugh Glass and his group of men are attacked by a tribe of Native Americans and are lucky to escape with their lives.

Then, there's the bear attack, superbly written as is the film shot, and you get so much from Punke's writing you almost feel the animal's claws ripping through your own flesh, and then the book is off, decisions are made, promises are broken and Hugh Glass finds himself alone and as close to death as one can be without passing.

Those first few hours, those first few days, the hopelessness of it all encompasses the reader in a way that you just have to keep going, keep turning those pages, 'cause let's face facts, everyone loves an underdog. So you start routing for him, willing Glass on, wanting him to push through the pain, both physical and psychological. There are other attacks, too, more Native Americans to outwit, more rivers to cross, bears to avoid, and how Hugh Glass actually managed to do what he did, survive what must have seemed un-survivable, is I suppose why this book makes for such good reading and why the film was made. Isn't it in our hearts, humans, in our very core, to survival, whatever the odds?

Four ice-covered stars for, The Revenant then and heartily recommended.