The Revenant – Michael Punke
Novel Conversation’s Book Club – July 2017 Book – The Revenant, by Michael Punke
July’s book for the Novel Conversations Book Club at the Sequim Library is The Revenant, by Michael Punke. It’s a very different book than last months and I promise you’ll find it hard to put down. If you’ve seen the movie with Leonardo DiCaprio and you liked it, I suggest you read the book, if nothing more than for the comparison. While there are many similarities, there’s also a lot of differences.
This book is based on a historical figure, which I found highly interesting and so the book is based on news accounts, although like anything else that happened long ago, authors have to fill in the blanks, so there’s much of that as well. I liked the book and found myself wanting to learn more about the main character. Thank you all for such a wonderful conversation during our July book club meeting. It was pretty awesome! As expected, we ended up talking about the book The Revenant, by Michael Punke, and also the movie that was made from the novel. In fact, the movie played on television about three days before our meeting, so it was very fresh in my mind when we were discussing the differences.
We spent a lot of time talking about what life must have been like back then and noted that it was likely because of his experiences up until the grizzly attack that Hugh Glass was able to survive afterwards. In fact, someone mentioned that probably none of us would be able to survive something like that now and that’s probably true.
We also talked about Hugh Glass as a sympathetic character, even though he was out for revenge. In the book, he’s vengeful because they stole his rifle and his knife – two key tools needed for survival in the wilderness. Most of the group thought he was not vengeful because they left him to die; after all, they were in fear of Indian attacks and it was logical to leave him behind. In the movie, his vengeance is because of the murder of his son. So there you have it – two very different ideas from two different mediums.
Here’s a link if you want to find out more about it.
