Hey guys, today I'm with a review of The Revenant by Michael Punke.
Now, I don't actually have a whole lot to say about this book, so it will probably be
a relatively short review, but I wanted to give it its own distinct review because although
the film version has done phenomenally well, obviously, I haven't actually heard a whole
lot about the book that inspired the film.
If you're watching this video, I'm going to go ahead and assume that you have access to
other kinds of media and therefore have been exposed to the plot of The Revenant the movie,
so I will just go ahead and simplify it for myself and read you guys the back cover.
"The year is 1823 and the trappers of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company live a brutal frontier
life.
Hugh Glass is among the companies 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.
Two company men are dispatched to stay behind and tend to Glass before he dies.
When the men rob and abandon him instead, Glass is driven to survive by one desire:
revenge.
With shocking grit and determination, Glass sets out, crawling at first, across hundreds
of miles of uncharted American frontier.
Based on a true story, The Revenant is a remarkable tale of obsession, the human will stretched
to its limits, and the lengths one man will go to for retribution."
I did see the film before I read the book and I'm sure that did color my reading of
it somewhat, but I will go ahead and just talk about them in conjunction with each other
because in my mind it's really hard to kind of separate them out, even though they are
quite different.
Although the story of The Revenant is relatively small in that it's just following one man's
quest for revenge, the film feels very grandiose.
What I mean, it gives you these really grand, panning, panoramic shots of the landscape,
you really get to see where in relation to each other all the humans are, and it feels
very big and very bigger than one person.
What I think the book does totally differently is that it's very much just focused in on
the individual characters and actually, you get more of a multi-perspective experience
in the book than you do in the film.
Like I said, the film was only inspired by the book, so their plots are quite different.
There are quite a few more characters in the book and, in the film, when there's a lot
of time spent on Hugh Glass' half-Native American son, he doesn't actually exist in the book.
So, if you're looking for an exact regurgitation of the film, this probably won't be the book
for you.
However, if you like survival stories, this is definitely
something you should pick up.
Hugh Glass is a badass, there's no other way to put that.
You almost get more of a sense of that in the book than you do in the film, because
although you can see Leonardo di Caprio struggling through life as very injured and sick Hugh
Glass, in the book you get all these little details and interior thoughts that you can't
get through film.
So, I don't know, for me it almost worked better in that sense.
However, I did only end up giving this three and a half out of five stars and I contribute
that totally to the writing style.
Michael Punke is actually the U.S. ambassador to the World Trade Organization in Geneva,
Switzerland, and he's written two other historical books.
I'm not sure if they are works of historical fiction or if they are strict non-fiction.
I think that really comes across in his writing style.
Because the movie was so beautifully shot and so atmospheric in feel, I was expecting
this to be a little bit more literary, but actually it read a lot like a history book.
Obviously, this is a work of historical fiction, but it just, it read very factual and the
tone to it wasn't nearly as lyrical as I was really wanting from it.
Like in the film there's not a lot of dialogue going on, so what you're mainly reading is
descriptions of Glass' physical well-being, of the scenery he's in, of the actions he's
forced to take, and I just think it would've worked better for me if it had been a little
bit more literary, a little bit more lyrical, and not quite so dry.
It was hard to feel like I was completely engaged because it felt very factual at times.
The other thing that I would say is that for the amount of hardship Hugh Glass goes through
and for the amount of resilience he displays, I thought the ending was very anticlimactic
and unsatisfactory.
Hugh Glass goes through so much crap and he is so determined to live to exact his revenge
that I just thought the ending was so lack luster and really not what I was hoping for.
It is a different ending than what you see in the film, so I'm not gonna (obviously)
spoil that for anybody who wants to read this, but I will say that the ending of this book
made me think that this is one of the rare cases where the film is actually better than
the original book.
So those are my thoughts on The Revenant by Michael Punke and, again, not my favorite
book.
Writing-wise, I just thought it really let the story down.
But if you are interested in early American survival stories, if you're interested in
the American frontier at all you definitely need to check this out because it is just
as gritty, if not more so than the film and if you haven't seen the film, go do so.
Alright, so that's all I have for today's video so if you guys have read The Revenant
and you would like to share your thoughts please let me know in the comments below.
If you are interested in reading it, let me know that as well.
Otherwise, thank you guys so much for watching, I hope you enjoyed the video, I hope you're
having a fantastic day, and I will see you next time.
Bye!