October 6, 2021
Like people, there are books that give and books that take. My Heart is a Chainsaw is a book that takes an awful lot from its readers.
Patience.
Concentration.
An in-depth knowledge of slasher films and pop culture references.
Tolerance of extreme gore - animal (elk) and human.
The ability to sleep.
A bit of your soul.
I can honestly say I’ve never read a novel like this one. A half-Indian 17-year-old girl named Jade is so obsessed with slasher movies that she’s convinced the plot of one is emerging in real life in her small Idaho town. Is she delusional and just seeing things she wants to see, or is there really a violent killer on the loose?
After an intense opening chapter where very bad, very scary things happen to a young tourist couple from the Netherlands out on the town’s lake, the book downshifts and turns into the slowest of slow burns to acclimate readers to Jade’s life and mindset. Long expository third person chapters with long paragraphs and long sentences are punctuated with first person school papers Jade has written for history class, naturally all using her slasher-passion lens. Through these "Slasher 101" papers, we fill in our own gaps of horror movie knowledge and get foreshadowing of terrors to come.
While those terrors do eventually arrive, it’s not until about the 60% mark that gore-seekers will get their payoff. The last 40% of the book is a knockout. You’ll white knuckle your copy while grimacing… and gagging. (My Heart is a Chainsaw might as well come with a “gags guaranteed!” sticker on the cover.)
That black-and-white book cover design, with a slash going through it, feels very appropriate. This is a love-it-or-hate-it, no-gray-area read. There’s only a handful of people I’d recommend it to, but to those people I recommend it most highly.
I’ll leave you with the ending. My Heart is a Chainsaw has the most unforgettable two concluding paragraphs of a novel I’ve probably ever encountered. I was so moved that I read them five or six times in a row, and I’m still thinking about them the next day. Stephen Graham Jones delivers a final gut punch that convinced me I couldn’t give his book anything less than five stars.
The last things it took from me were my breath... then my heart.
I’m grateful to Gallery Books and the author for the opportunity to read and review a gifted copy via NetGalley.
Blog: https://www.confettibookshelf.com/
Patience.
Concentration.
An in-depth knowledge of slasher films and pop culture references.
Tolerance of extreme gore - animal (elk) and human.
The ability to sleep.
A bit of your soul.
I can honestly say I’ve never read a novel like this one. A half-Indian 17-year-old girl named Jade is so obsessed with slasher movies that she’s convinced the plot of one is emerging in real life in her small Idaho town. Is she delusional and just seeing things she wants to see, or is there really a violent killer on the loose?
After an intense opening chapter where very bad, very scary things happen to a young tourist couple from the Netherlands out on the town’s lake, the book downshifts and turns into the slowest of slow burns to acclimate readers to Jade’s life and mindset. Long expository third person chapters with long paragraphs and long sentences are punctuated with first person school papers Jade has written for history class, naturally all using her slasher-passion lens. Through these "Slasher 101" papers, we fill in our own gaps of horror movie knowledge and get foreshadowing of terrors to come.
While those terrors do eventually arrive, it’s not until about the 60% mark that gore-seekers will get their payoff. The last 40% of the book is a knockout. You’ll white knuckle your copy while grimacing… and gagging. (My Heart is a Chainsaw might as well come with a “gags guaranteed!” sticker on the cover.)
That black-and-white book cover design, with a slash going through it, feels very appropriate. This is a love-it-or-hate-it, no-gray-area read. There’s only a handful of people I’d recommend it to, but to those people I recommend it most highly.
I’ll leave you with the ending. My Heart is a Chainsaw has the most unforgettable two concluding paragraphs of a novel I’ve probably ever encountered. I was so moved that I read them five or six times in a row, and I’m still thinking about them the next day. Stephen Graham Jones delivers a final gut punch that convinced me I couldn’t give his book anything less than five stars.
The last things it took from me were my breath... then my heart.
I’m grateful to Gallery Books and the author for the opportunity to read and review a gifted copy via NetGalley.
Blog: https://www.confettibookshelf.com/