I don’t remember exactly when or why I fell in love with horror as a genre.
It started early for me, I do know that.
I remember being really young, maybe 6 or 7, and having my older cousins absolutely terrify me at sleepovers with your typical spooky lore—your Bloody Mary, your guy with a hook for an arm. I remember finding those Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books at one of their houses, reading them when I wasn’t supposed to, and then having literal nightmares—particulrly, about one specific terrifying image from the book—for years.
(As an aside, the artwork from the Scary Stories books was all changed a few years ago to images which are more…child friendly. I do not know what went into this decision, but I have to assume it was a lot of complaints from parents of traumatized children.)
As I got a little older, I kind of naturally gravitated towards things that were spooky, despite giving myself anxiety and nightmares while doing so. All part of the fun, amiright?
I started off soft. I loved Goosebumps, I loved Fear Street, I loved Are You Afraid of the Dark? I’ve always been really itno thinking about ghosts and hauntings. I have long been obsessed with Halloween. One time in sixth grade, I wrote a "scary” short story that my teacher loved so much that she read it out loud to the class without etlling them who wrote it, and then earning me minor celebrity for a week when everyone else loved it and found out it was mine. This is probably my favorite memory (and one of few positive memories hahaha) from middle school.
Eventually my parents caved and let me watch horror movies—slashers, in particular—and I was hooked. My favorites, as an adolescent, were the Halloween , Friday the 13th, and Scream movies, which I rented from the local Blockbuster (I am 300 years old) so many times that I honestly may as well have just bought them.
This is all to say, I am a Big Fan of the genre, and so I’ve been very excitd about the recent books that have come out whichspeak to exactly this niche. I recently read Final Girls Support Group, by Grady Hendrix, along with Riley Sager’s Final Girls (that newsletter, in case ya missed it, is here) and really liked how those books engaged with the trope of the “final girl” from slasher movies in a kind of unique and differen way.
When I heard that Stephen Graham Jones was releasing a new book…to be totally honest, I was a little apathetic about it, because I was in the small minority of people who didn’t love his previous book, The Only Good Indians. This was a controversial opinion among horror fans,but I just think that specific brand of horror/what he was doing in that book was just not my jam. I was disappointed, and didn’t add Jones to my ‘authors to watch’ list at that moment, as TOGI wasthe only book of his I’ve ever read (though apparently he’s really prolific and has a ton of stuff he published earlier!). HOWEVER, I when I finally got around to checking out the book description for My Heart is a Chainsaw, I realized it was another Final Girl type book, and I decided to give it a try.
And wow, I am GLAD I did.
Plot (no spoilers):
Jade Daniels is a half-Indian outcast living in a rural lake town in Idaho, called Proofrock. The small town is nestled beside Indian Lake, and and Camp Blood (site of a massacre some years ago). Soon, it will also be home to Terra Nova, a richy rich development being built for the ultra-wealthy (ie: big time gentrification happening).
Jade’s father is abusive, her mother is not in the picture, and the rest of the town regards her as their resident weirdo. She doesn’t have very many friends, and spends most of her time watching slasher films. In a way, Jade uses horror as a shield against the world—she has a truly encyclopedic knowledge of horror, which she uses to writes short essays about the history of slashers (“Slasher 101”) as extra credit for her history class. Those essays are sprinkled throughout the book as a means to get us, the reader, acquainted with the horrors to come—and also to give us a glimpse into the lens through which Jade views her world.
Jade is actually so obsessed with slasher films that she becomes convinced tht the plot of one is emerging in her town. Jade determines that a beautiful newcomer, Letha Mondragon—the daughter of one of the founders of Terra Nova—will be the final girl in her own personal slasher, and sets about trying to train Letha for what’s coming, before it’s too late.
Throughout the story we get to know Jade, and get to know the trauma that she’s experienced which makes brutal horror films feel like an escape. All the while, we’re left wondering—is Jade delusional? is she making things up? Is she just seeing what she wants to see? Or is there really a violent killer on the loose?—and, if so, who really has what it takes to be the final girl?
Thoughts (I don’t think I am spoilery but proceed with caution?):
Okay, wow. Talk about a loveletter to the slasher genre. In my review a few weeks ago, I said a lot about how Grady Hendrix’s book was written for horror fans, but Jones took it to a whole different level here. The encyclopedic level of knowledge and attention to detail for a HUGE volume of horror movies was…impressive, to say the least.
In case anyone is curious (I was), I found this list of all the films Jones mentions in the book. As you can see, it’s a ton. I’ll admit that I haven’t seen a good handful of these myself. Even for the movies I am very familiar with, I felt like I was kind of learning a lot. It is definitely in depth analysis and nerd-levels of niche knowledge, but in my opinion, I don’t think that it’s written in a way that is necessarily inaccessible or incomprehensible for someone who doesn’t have an indepth knowledge of horror. I never felt myself feeling ‘lost’ about what was going on—if anything, it made me want to go and watch a bunch of these movies!
Actually, Alma Katsu blurbed this book, saying: “You don’t have to be a slasher fan to read My Heart is a Chainsaw, but I guarantee you’ll be one after you read it.”
So there you have it, I suppose!
The story starts out with a kind of preface to Jade’s story, focusing on two Dutch tourists who encounter an…unfortunate fate. This first chapter reads exactly like a spooky Scandinavian horror film and I loved it. It creeped me out! I read the first chapter of this book one night before bed and definitely felt myself being a little spooked, which does not normally happen for me when I read horror. Needless to say, I was instantly hooked.
The story then slows down a bit to focus in on our main character, Jade. From here I will say that there were times in this book where the pacing tripped me up, which was one of my major gripes about The Only Good Indians as well. In my opinion, it definitely was a smart move to start the book off the way it did, because I don’t know if I would have gotten as sucked into the story as I did otherwise.
That is to say, most of the action of the book starts well after the 60% mark. Everything that happens first is kinda slow, gives lots of background knowledge, and builds tension. This isn’t a bad thing, and it certainly pays off in the end, but I just sometimes found myself really yearning for something else to happen.
Honestly though, that’s really my only complaint. There was sooo much I loved about this book.
First of all, the “Slasher 101” essays in between the chapters were…masterful, the more I think about it. On the surface, these essays are meant as an introduction to horror, for someone who isn’t familar (in the context of the story, this person is Jade’s history teacher, and then later, it’s Letha—but it’s also for us, the reader). These little 101 interludes intentionally set us up with what to expect. They set the scene for what’s coming in the following chapters, it explains typical horror tropes and how they are executed, with examples! You’d think that this would leave us with a really contrived story where we get exactly what we’d expect—but no! SGJ manages to both honor and shatter all of the tropes/expectations that he sets us up for, and it’s so cool.
In that vein, I really liked that the concept of the “final girl” is kind of re-written in this story. In the story, Jade picks Letha as being a ‘final girl’ for all fo the reasons that often come up in the trope: final girls are sweet, virginal, perfect, beautiful. Jade says again and again that she does not herself possess what it takes to be a final girl—but we learn throughout the book that, of course she does! She’s may not be the typical, tropey final girl, but boy oh boy does she have what it takes.
The mystery of who or what is perpetrating the eventual mayhem in Proofrock is super interesting. SGJ sets us up to believe, via the “Slasher 101” essays (and also just her general, obvious expertise) that Jade knows what’s coming at all times—so we believe what she believes. When she’s wrong, when she’s surprised, so are we we.
Apart from it being a “slasher” story, I liked the thought-provoking aspects of Jade’s trauma being just as much ‘horrific’ as everything else going on, and in fact was really interested in how her backstory unfolded. I think the more we learn about Jade, the more her obsession with slashers—specifically, the revenge story arc—begins to make sense. After all, even Jade expains that horror isn’t about the gore, the murder, the body count. Horror is about revenge, retribution, justice. Inherent in slashers are the underlying glimmers of hope. And so when we think about Jade being obsessed with horror, and then we learn about her traumatic past, we start to understand that slashers aren’t just a hobby for Jade—they’re a life raft.
It made me spend a lot of time thinking about how we think about trauma, and the various ways people may go about healing their trauma. What does it mean to be strong?
This isn’t to say that this isn’t, at it’s core, a slasher—it totally is! There’s plenty of guts and gore to be had, and it is written in such a way that I was gasping and gagging just as much as I’d hope :)
I think that the ghost of Indian Lake is pretty obviously symbolic of gentrification/colonization—in itself, horrific—but not so heavy handed that I felt beaten over the head by it, if that makes sense. I was impressed with how SGJ was able to pack so much meaning and symbolism into this story, to be honest.
I was really surprised to find myself in near tears at the last two paragraphs of this book—which I obviously won’t spoil, but wow. Really a gut punch, in the best way.
Incredible that this book can be so many things at once: scary, gory, haunting, but also incredibly full of heart, of hope, of triumph.
I feel like this review is very jumbled but, Basically, I loved it, and now I feel like I have a lot of homework in the form of scary movies to watch!
FWIW I think this is definitely a good companion read to The Final Girls Support Group—they are similar but different—and would recommend certainly for fans of horror, slashers (obviously), thrillers, and coming of age narratives.
A few TWs for this one though: sexual assault, trauma, self harm, suicidal ideation, and obviously lots of descriptive blood/gore.
Until next time…
-Amy