Walton explores people’s tendencies to make bad decisions and what we choose to do with regrets and the secrets we keep.
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She unravels the lead-up to Opal and Nev’s “Final Revival” in a piece of literature that is perfectly timed to respond to where we are now as a country. Walton does an exquisite job weaving together the pains of loss and knowledge to show the real America and how only certain moments are cast as significant and remembered by most storytellers. Walton’s infused details culminate in the story’s Riverside Showcase disaster, which affected countless lives. Walton combines the fictional story of Opal & Nev with true and untold aspects of the racialized pop culture that endured, and continue to endure, in post-Civil Rights America. We’re taken to the private art parties of Andy Warhol and runway shows that, for the first time, featured a majority of Black models, and shown how the Black Panther Party provided private protection to artists on tours when their managers wouldn’t spring for extra security.
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Music lovers will appreciate the subtle references to bands like Fleetwood Mac and Queen. She manages to transport readers to an early-to-mid ’70s that doesn’t get discussed much: the punk scene and how Black culture influenced everything around it. The raw, internal world of Opal is put on display - from her childhood in Detroit and tense relationship with her religious sister to a James Baldwin-like self-exploration in Paris. Opal remains as political as ever while trying to discover herself, as Nev loses himself to addiction. He is a bit David Bowie and a bit Paul McCartney, with flaming red hair, a wild sense of humor and an easy demeanor.īut their musical partnership cannot withstand the events of the Riverside Showcase, and we see them diverge.
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Nev is a quirky white man who shifts away from the punk scene they started and toward folksy music. She is tall, dark-skinned and bald and commands all the space in the room, and is given the space to do so on page. She is a Black woman who dared to speak out and never stopped. Every piece of the past divulged through this oral history framework drives the plot and characterization. More than anything, the interviews with people who make up their lives, such as managers, assistants, friends, other musicians and fans, show the disparity between Opal and Nev more than anything else. Walton richly captures the way two people’s lives can intertwine yet catapult far away from each other due to privilege and circumstances. As Sunny gets to the bottom of what happened to her father that tragic day, everything jolts into a new perspective.
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“The Final Revival” forces readers to reckon with how we view pivotal moments in history and how tragic and personal moments can be turned into flashpoints that are discussed but not fully understood.
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Despite all of this, Sunny is determined to provide a fair and balanced look at this band that affected so many people, including her. Underneath that, Sunny has a deeper secret: Opal Jones had a love affair with her father. Music journalist Sunny Shelton is tasked with writing the band’s biography, potentially because her father used to play for them - and was even killed at an event where they were playing. Fictional cult classic ’70s punk rock band Opal & Nev is coming together for a 2016 reunion show and to tease the possibility of a tour. The book is constructed as an oral history, with a premise as complex as its characters. The Final Revival of Opal & Nev” by debut author Dawnie Walton is the type of novel that grabs you no matter your interests: music, art, the 1970s, culture and the progress of civil rights through the decades.