The Book of Revelation (1999, re-released 2006), by Rupert Thomson

In a state of high alertness as the credits rolled for Ana Kokkinos’ new film The Book of Revelation, my one resolution among ephemeral half-thoughts was to read the novel it came from. The following morning, a copy of the 2000 paperback edition (sporting a $10 sale sticker on account of its redundancy now that the film tie-in cover has arrived) found me from a sale table at work.

Dominating the otherwise white cover of my edition is a crimson light bulb, hanging from a line of text that originally appeared in the Guardian newspaper. ‘An exceptional book…It is perfect’. Discerning readers like to think such marketing babble doesn’t influence them, but of course it does – particularly when the Guardian calls something ‘perfect’. Of course, I had already made the decision to buy (I must admit, the $10 sticker helped me along), but the Guardian was telling me I wouldn’t regret it – and I was inclined to listen.

After flicking through the four pages of positive criticism inside the front cover (which begins, ironically, with the Independent’s assessment that the book ‘is so good it doesn’t need a marketing campaign’), I arrive at the first line, which looks suspiciously like a cliché: ‘I can see it all so clearly, even now’. But what follows in the 264 pages hence is a story told so well that to even consider the application of adjectives is to perpetrate an act of debasement.

Daniel, who is written with such subtle surety that, by book’s end, my mental image of his character is no longer Tom Long (who plays the role in Kokkinos’ film), is a renowned dancer to whom something occurs that is so monstrous it causes him to lose his identity. That such a thing would never occur in real-life – he is abducted by three masked and cloaked women who (ab)use him for their sexual gratification – is a strength and attractiveness of literature. This hint of the fantastic, bringing human characters into the extremes of experience and imagining their responses, has informed the popularity of the fictional narrative since before a jealous Oedipus killed his father, and certainly well before Raskolnikov was confronted by his own murderous capacity. The technique is used to devastating effect by contemporary Melbourne authors Elliot Perlman (Three Dollars; Seven Types of Ambiguity) and Christos Tsiolkas (Loaded; Dead Europe).

I wonder what it would be like to read The Book of Revelation without having seen the film first – without knowing the story. Even anticipating the savage final twist (perhaps because I knew what was coming?), the story affected me, emotionally and unexpectedly. Its 264 pages, all of which were read during the course of two return train trips from La Trobe University to Flinders Street, are at various times excrutiating (I felt physically ill at one point), truly happy, and indescribably sad. After ‘I can see it all so clearly, even now’, Thomson avoids clichés, even when describing love.

Did I empathise with Daniel especially because of the role-reversal (if anyone were to be abducted by three members of the opposite sex, we would expect her to be a she)? More worrying is the possibility that my empathy derives primarily from our shared gender. I don’t really give that interpretation much credence, preferring to believe the story’s authenticity is invested by the brilliance of the writing.

Both book and film deserve ten times the audience they’ll attract, though a general warning should accompany these very adult texts: readers and viewers will be confronted by some highly disturbing scenes. Now I’m on the lookout for Thomson’s other novels.