Oh how good it is to be in October. The leaves are turning, the air is cooling after an oppressively hot summer, and horror is in the air. I get to hang out with my partner and watch 31 horror movies over the month and really dig into my favorite time of year. On top of that I always like to schedule a few spooky reviews for the month to really lean in to the vibes and this year is no different. Starting off this month is My Heart Is A Chainsaw, by Stephen Graham Jones, a slasher that lives up to its name, and spills the amount of blood that is implied.
New houses are going up in a section of protected forest across the lake, future homes to an incredibly wealthy clique of families. Decades ago, a series of murders occurred at a camp on the very ground where those houses are being raised. It’s not long before a couple of tourists are found dead in Indian Lake. Jade Daniels, a native american high school senior, knows the score, and she smells a slasher in the air. Somehow, no one else sees the signs, and even though she’s seen as the troubled child in the town, she sets out to prevent the worst of it. Armed with her encyclopedic knowledge of slasher films, she looks for the final girl who can survive it and stop it all.
I have never picked up Jones’ work, though I have listened to several interviews with him about his work. It’s always been just out of reach due to timing, but this year I wanted to change that and boy oh boy did I make the right call. The man knows his horror. His writing is punchy with a frenetic quality that builds suspense while giving the characters room to breathe. He knows his tropes down to the marrow, giving himself ample time to misdirect, or subvert expectations, especially if you’re more of a movie horror fan (though, there is a lot of crossover).
Jade is the perfect protagonist for the setup Jones employs. She knows her movies in and out, and each chapter is introduced with a paper by Jade on the history of slashers. Sometimes they are relevant to the next beats in the story, other times they are in for the long payoff. Your mileage may vary on these sections depending on your knowledge of the genre, and tolerance for a 17 year old’s explanations, but personally I had a blast with them. They are imbued with Jade’s voice, her energetic fanaticism bleeds off the pages of these essays. And while she teaches the reader (in the book it’s her history teacher) about all the things she knows, it also introduces a bit of an unreliable narrator at points. Jade starts to feel like she has something to hide, and the longer she avoids certain bits of information, the deeper you are pulled into her own story. It all leads to a brutal reveal that is heartrending.
The horror elements were the next star of the show after Jade. Jones has a really effective skill when it comes to his horror. He knows just how much to show, and when to show it. There are moments of incredible singular violence where every little detail is splashed onto the page. But when things are chaotic, and Jade’s view of the event is limited, the shadows reign supreme. Details flick in and out like fireflies in the night. You know the result of what’s happening, and the scale, but the how is lost in the confusion. Jade, while infinitely curious and determined to remain in a supportive role throughout the story, gets mixed up in the events and can’t tell it straight. As much as she wants to play the sidelines, she’s in the movie as much as anyone else and needs to survive. It’s handled with finesse, where the most jarring and turbulent scenes have a narrative quality to them, but it’s disjointed letting your imagination take hold as Jade desperately fights to survive.
One thing that feels relevant to point out is Jones’ understanding of who horror is for, and who it tends to be about. A lot of horror from the U.S. has a specific flavor, especially when it comes to slashers. That’s not to say it’s bad because it is mostly about white people in the suburbs, it just is a specific lens to view the world, and what scares those kinds of folk. In My Heart Is A Chainsaw, Jade, a native american teenager, is invested in a type of story that doesn’t involve her, so she sees herself as a mentor to the final girl she ferrets out. She slowly gets sucked in and the story begins to change, it starts to have a different lens. Jones’ makes the story more interesting, introducing class into the mix with a community invaded by people so rich, they bought protected forest land to build their mega mansions on. This isn’t just a “teenagers die” plot as so many of the side characters are fleshed out, have relationships with Jade that make their mortality that much more palpable. Obviously, it’s easy to root for Jade, but it’s nice when you fear for a few others too, and Jones nailed it for me.
All in all I was gripped by this book from start to finish. Jade pulled me through it all, wounded and changed. If you’re a horror fan who doesn’t mind a little extra education on slashers, pick this up. If you’ve watched a lot of movies, but want to see what book horror is like, this is a good starter kit. But if you’re new to the genre, and don’t want a lot of talk about what the genre is, you might want to stay clear. For me, My Heart Is A Chainsaw was the perfect way to start the spooky season. Though My Heart Is A Chainsaw is the first book in the Indian Lake Trilogy, it has a definitive end to the story as it’s told and it’s a good one. I can’t wait to pick up Don’t Fear The Reaper and see where Jones’ take me.
Rating: My Heart is a Chainsaw – Let her rip.
-Alex
While these things were not discussed in the review, they are a part of the book, Content Warning: Suicide, Discussions of Sexual Assault, Murder.
