My Heart Is a Chainsaw: Volume 1

After The Only Good Indians last year, Stephen Graham Jones set the bar higher than most authors could dream of achieving. I say that because The Only Good Indians was easily one of the best novels I’ve had the pleasure of reading, regardless of the genre…ever. My Heart Is a Chainsaw isn’t likely to leave quite as profound of a lasting impact as that book, but it’s a different sort of beast altogether. And boy, is it a beast.Jade Daniels is a walking, talking archive of all things slasher-related, or even slasher-adjacent. She’s a socially awkward outcast who speaks to others in slasher genre shorthand. To her, everything in life can be easily compared and contrasted with plot points of one or more of her favorite movies. Every occasion has an appropriate quote from the slasher genre. As a person, she’s equal parts aggravating and endearing to the reader–assuming the reader, like me, is a hardcore slasher fanatic.Finally, her dead-end life in a dead-end Idaho town appears to be heading toward a fantasy come true. With the arrival of Lethe Mondragon, the final piece falls into place as Jade determines she’s located the archetypal “final girl” for the real-life slasher horror to play out.Is Jade another Cassandra, doomed to warn everyone of the impending nightmare and tragedy, only to be dismissed as all youth are in the movies she so adores? Is she simply a troubled girl who has lost the capacity to differentiate between fantasy and reality, on the verge of returning to the institution from which she’d only recently been released? You’ll have to read the book to find out. If you’re familiar with Jones as an author, you should know you won’t be disappointed.As you reach the halfway point of this novel, everything begins cascading out of control with a feverish pace and such a dizzying assortment of horrors that you’ll hardly see the next twist coming–and there are indeed twists.The novel is so much more than a slasher story. I’d love to tell you more, but I’d be giving too much away. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is also a coming-of-age tale about an indigenous girl haunted by her past and fixated on the haunted history of the mountain town she calls home. This is a story of friendship, a dysfunctional family, and an even more dysfunctional community.My Heart Is a Chainsaw should assure any readers that Stephen Graham Jones is–I say this without a doubt in my mind–perhaps the single greatest writer currently active in the horror genre.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this story.. It felt exactly like watching a horror movie.. a slasher movie to be more specific. It was scary, and super creepy, and the tension built slowly just the way i like itJade is our main character and she is a horror movie fan.. specifically Slasher films.. She is narrorating our story and so badly wants a real life slasher to appear in her town.. She is watching for the signs that she knows preceeds a slasher in every movie, and has almost encyclopedic knowledge of these movies. In fact she reminds me of Randy from the Scream movies .He was a character obsessed with Horror movies like Jade and told everyone how the real life killings in Woodsborough would play out .Like Randy when Jade realizes that what she wants most is actually happening she does her best to warn/prepare the final girl (the girl who always survives at the end of a horror movie) for what is about to come.I would have totally been Jades friend in high school. While I don't remember every detail of horror movies, they are one of my favorite genres and we actually get mentions of my favorite movies like Scream, I Know What you Did Last Summer and Chucky. I think we would have gotten along real well.Jade was an amazing character, and I loved her. She did her best to be herself and not let anybody change who she is. She knew what was coming and did her best to warn people even though it fell on deaf ears until the carnage started. She is brave and completly independant.While I was following Jade along on her quest to find out who the Slasher is, and her trying to help the final girl I felt like Jade knew exactly what she was doing and thinking.. When she was confident in her decisions so was I, when she second guessed herself I did too.. and that ending was totally and completly unexpected and I loved it..We were left with some unanswered questions at the end but I think that is the nature of a horror movie.. We never completly know the persons motive or what happens when the story ends.. However I would love if this book got a sequel at some point.. Even if it didn't specifically follow Jade again, or just made some vague mentions of what happened at Indian Lake and what happened to Jade afterwards.. you'll know what I mean when you finish the book..While both of my siblings like to read, we really don't have the same reading tastes. We all do love horror movies and this is a book I could confidently recommend to both of them and know they would both enjoy it.I would definitely read more books by this author in the future and look forward to reading his backlist titles.

Nestled in what could be a National Forest, Indian Lake in Proofrock, Idaho, is being threatened by a developer who envisions wilderness mansions for the wealthy on the pristine side of the lake with impoverished locals, many of them Native Americans, living far enough away on the other side of the lake. More than merely threatened are two tourists from the Netherlands: Sven and Lotte. Hoping to “soak in” the natural beauty of the area before returning home, they encounter something evil on the water as they venture out upon it in a canoe. Something that has survived which shouldn’t have. Something which makes sure neither Sven nor Lotte will survive. The two of them are only the beginning.MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW (2021) is the latest novel by the remarkable Stephen Graham Jones. As he does in his last novel, THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS (2020), Jones brings a beautifully composed, literary style to a novel which is quite dark (with occasional sparkles of humor) and references to Native American life today as well as cultural beliefs with roots in what many would deem to be the supernatural. Lush with vivid description which appeals to one’s various senses, Jones chronicles his story in a leisurely fashion, slowly building suspense and fright, until the latter portion of the novel becomes quite cinematic and frantic in tone and action.A superb trait of Jones’ writing is his ability to create and animate amazing, diverse characters. Minor characters as well as those principal to the plot are real and believable. Foremost among them is high school senior Jade Daniels, a Blackfeet native. All but alienated from her peers, having taken a leave from school after an attempted suicide, Jade’s closest friends are a history teacher, Mr. Holmes, and the local sheriff, Hardy,—both of whom are ironic choices as friends because Jade is constantly in trouble with both of them—and others as well—until Letha Mondragon appears on the scene, her family planning on moving into one of the mansions across the lake.Far from being a mere fan, Jade is a walking, talking encyclopedia of slasher film knowledge. She lives and breathes slasher films and wishes she actually was in one. Slasher films are obviously her escape from the grim reality she sees daily. “Horror is [her] religion.” Jade also envisions her new friend, Letha, becoming a “final girl,” the one who nearly always is the last one standing, the survivor in slasher films. As much as she would like to be a “final girl” herself, Jade knows the rules: “Final girls are good, they’re uncomplicated, they have these reserves of courage coiled up inside them, not layer after layer of shame, or guilt.” Jade doesn’t fit the mold. She is far from an innocent much like most “final girls” and Jade also carries within her a dreadful secret.The papers she writes for Mr. Holmes to receive extra credit so she can still graduate are all devoted to slasher movies. Jones’ omniscient narrator and Jade throughout the novel provide a primer on slasher movies with frequent mention of and discussions about film titles and content. Some of Jones’ references, however, are subtle, but to fans of the genre, they are readily identifiable. However, even dedicated slasher film fans are likely to add titles of films they need to see or re-watch from reading MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW.With the deaths of Sven and Lotte along with an ever-growing list of victims, Jade has the confirmation she has long perceived—Proofrock is about to become front and center in a real-life slasher film with grisly horrors fast approaching. Adding further validation to Jade’s theory and worse of all—what could be better timing and a more ideal setting for a slasher attack than a Fourth of July celebration in which the entire town participates. It is an annual Proofrock celebration and fast approaching.As Jade attempts to “train” Letha to become a “final girl,” the two are plunged deeper into a world of terror and personal peril which Jones masterfully relates. The author deftly builds suspense in MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW and if possible, the novel takes on a darker and darker tone, growing deadlier teeth, as it becomes more and macabre. Amazingly, with all of the nightmarishness, Jones utilizes Jade and her at times flippant attitude to add touches of sardonic humor throughout. Jones also makes sure his readers never lose sight of the humanity involved as well as the motivation behind the ever-growing number of deaths in his story. His messages regarding American life today and poverty never become intrusive or moralizing.Readers who patiently follow the plot of MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW and its growing intensity with anxiety are treated to a tremendous climax during the town’s Independence Day celebration. Ironically, part of the town’s celebration includes a yearly outdoor showing of the movie JAWS, a film Jade explains earlier is a slasher film at heart. Jones pulls out all of the stops as chaos reigns in the water in the projected movie, just as does blood, killing, and a bountiful supply of gore in Indian Lake itself.True to the tradition of slasher films, the nerve-wracking bedlam which takes place in Indian Lake is followed by an even more potent, personal show-down between good and evil. The conclusion of MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW is tremendously successful and unforgettable.Stephen Graham Jones follows the story with a most heart-felt and insightful Acknowledgements in which he gives thanks to numerous people for aiding in the completion of MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW and why. He also informs readers the novel was ten years in the making, having undergone a number of total rewrites until a satisfactory story was given birth. The effort put into MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW is most evident throughout. Readers will be pleased.

It seems lately that a lot of authors and filmmakers are interested in producing not only horror stories, but specifically self-aware or self-referential meta-horror. This is no exception. However, while I largely feel like that trend has worn itself out despite being interesting in the beginning, this particular book stands out from the crowd in all the right ways.The main character, Jade, is a psychologically complicated horror fan who believes she sees the beginnings of the "slasher cycle" in her small town. Told from her point of view, the story allows us to see inside the workings of a slasher story from the perspective of a horror fan well-versed in all the tropes and yet somehow directly involved in the story. Horror fans will find the constant references to slasher movies, new and old, popular and obscure, fascinating and entertaining (though if you're a stickler about spoilers, be warned that the book does give away a few of the endings of said horror movies). But what's even more important is that this format allows us to get a look inside the main character's mind, and she's a fascinatingly complicated person. Deeply flawed (as she admits herself several times throughout the narrative) yet nevertheless likable and often relatable.The plot has plenty of red herrings and takes plenty of turns, to the point that even a slasher fan like myself (or, indeed, like the main character) can't figure it out until we're meant to, which is a towering accomplishment in a genre that, let's face it, often skews toward the formulaic. Stephen Graham Jones has a talent for exploiting those formulae to subvert our expectations, and it makes this book not only a great horror novel but a thrilling mystery.It does take a little while for the plot to really get going, but that's not a problem here because the character study that dominates much of the book's length is gripping throughout. However, in an attempt to plug the reader directly into the character's mind, the book is written in a stream of consciousness style that won't be to everyone's taste. I mostly found it stylistically elegant, though even I struggled to keep caught up with a couple of the twists and turns in the main character's inner monologue. Others will likely find the style distracting. Even if you find yourself in that camp, though, you really ought to read the book anyway, because the plot and characters are well worth it.And the final reveal--or at least part of the final reveal--will send chills down your spine, especially once you start to reflect on some of the earlier passages in light of the new information. This is a psychologically deep (and sometimes devastating) book that belongs in the library of any horror fan.

our author has written for us a teenage female protagonist with the personality of a middle aged single man who lives in his mother’s basement and watches horror films. i couldn’t make it through 50 pages of this pretentious sad little book. love the title though!