The Book of Revelations by Mitchell Hadley
Publisher: Throckmorton Press
Genre: Romance, Historical
Rating: 4 Stars
Reviewed by AstilbeEvery life has a story waiting to be revealed.
The Book of Revelations is a haunting, postmodern literary novel that refracts a single life through multiple viewpoints, spanning the American Midwest of the 1960s to the San Francisco of the 1980s.
At its center is eight-year-old Nan Jaffe, whose early world collapses in a single night. What follows is not a linear narrative but a mosaic: a marriage quietly unraveling, grandparents attempting a clean break, a teacher offering rescue in the hope of saving himself, a diner waitress watching with older-sister concern, and a poet providing temporary shelter. Each voice sees only a piece; none holds the whole.
Nan becomes Robin, Robin becomes Nancy, Nancy becomes Ellen—names changed like addresses, in the hope that distance might erase what cannot be forgotten. Yet the past persists: in nightmares, in a stuffed monkey that listens without judgment, in the echo of a promise made at eight years old.
The Book of Revelations refracts a single life through multiple lenses, revealing how memory is subjective, truth elusive, and the past impossible to erase. It is a precise meditation on memory, guilt, and the limits of protection, asking what remains when everything familiar is taken away, and whether some absences can ever be filled—or are simply carried forward until the last story is finally revealed.
Nobody can outrun their past.
I appreciated how this story explored the myriad of ways in which childhood trauma can resurface again in adulthood and disrupt just about every aspect of someone’s life. Nan was haunted by something awful that happened when she was a little girl, and her memories of that night followed her no matter how far away from home she wandered. Her reaction to that trauma felt realistic to me, and I never stopped hoping that she’d find peace.
It would have been helpful to allow the romantic storyline more time to flourish. Figuring out whether to even label this a romance in the first place was a little bit of a dilemma for me given how long it took to appear, but I ultimately decide in favor of including that genre in the labels I selected for this review due to how important romantic love became later on in the plot. With that being said, I would recommend patience in the beginning for readers who are accustomed to much more swoon-worthy tales. This was a realistic take on how and when love can develop, but it was worth it once it showed up even though I will continue to wish that there had been more foreshadowing of these events early on.
Mr. Hadley’s decision to take an understated approach to the traumatic event in question was definitely the right one for both Nan and the plot as a whole. There was no need for salacious details about what exactly happened that night, and the bare facts were eventually revealed as Nan moved further into her healing journey. I liked the fact that the author trusted his audience to fill in the details he chose not to include and that he always remained focused on the protagonist’s emotional growth and mental health instead of other details that didn’t even matter in the end.
The Book of Revelations was heartwarming and life affirming.
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