My Heart Is a Chainsaw

By Stephen Graham Jones

Winner of the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel

In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest chilling novel that “will give you nightmares. The good kind, of course” (BuzzFeed) from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, Stephen Graham Jones.

“Some girls just don’t know how to die…”

Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called “a literary master” by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and “one of our most talented living writers” by Tommy Orange.

Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw “a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre.” On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.

Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies…especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.

Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges…a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Aug 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982137656

Stephen Graham Jones

Stephen Graham Jones is the New York Times bestselling author of The Only Good Indians. He has been an NEA fellowship recipient and a recipient of several awards including the Ray Bradbury Award from the Los Angeles Times, the Bram Stoker Award, the Shirley Jackson Award, the Jesse Jones Award for Best Work of Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Independent Publishers Award for Multicultural Fiction, and the Alex Award from American Library Association. He is the Ivena Baldwin Professor of English at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Book preview

NIGHT SCHOOL

On the battered paper map that’s carried the two of them across they’re not sure how many of the American states now, this is Proofrock, Idaho, and the dark body of water before them is Indian Lake, and it kind of goes forever out into the night.

"Does that mean there’s Indians in the lake, or does it mean that Indians made it?" Lotte asks, a gleam of excitement to her eyes.

Everything here’s named after Indians, Sven says back, whispering because there’s something solemn about being awake when everyone’s asleep.

Their rental car is ticking down behind them from the six-hour push from Casper, the doors open because they just wanted to look, to see, to soak all this in before going back to the Netherlands at the end of the week.

Lotte shines her phone’s light down onto the fluttering map and looks up from it and across the water, like trying to connect what she’s seeing in lines and grids to what she’s actually standing in.

Wat? Sven says.

"In American," Lotte tells him for the two-hundredth time. If they want partial course credit for immersion, they have to actually immerse.

What? Sven repeats, the word belligerent in English, like trying to make elbow room for itself.

That should be the national forest on the other side, Lotte says, chinning across the water because her hands are struggling to get the map shut.

Everything’s a national forest, Sven grumbles, angling his head as if to peer deeper into the darkness at all these black trees.

"But you can’t do that in the king’s forest, can you?" Lotte asks, finally getting the map folded in one of the six different ways it’s possible to fold it.

Sven follows her eyes across Indian Lake. There’s little floating pinpoints of light over there that only really come into focus when you look into the darkness right beside them.

Hunh, he says, Lotte coming up behind him to rest her chin on his shoulder, hold his waist in her hands.

Sven breathes in deep with wonder when the lights rearrange themselves, suggesting great yellow necks in the inky blackness: strange and massive animals, piecing the world together one lakeshore at a time. Then, a ways down the shore, a ball of flickering light arcs up into the velvety sky and hangs, hangs.

Mooi, Lotte says right next to his ear, and Sven repeats it in American: Beautiful.

We shouldn’t, Lotte says, which of course means the exact opposite.

Sven looks back to the car, shrugs sure, what the hell. It’s not like they’re going to be here again, right? It’s not like they’re going to get another chance to be twenty years old in America, a whole lake at their feet like it bubbled up just for them to dip their toes into—and maybe more.

They leave their clothes on the hood, the antenna, draped over the open doors.

The mountain air is crisp and thin, their skin pale and bare.

The water will be— Sven starts to say, but Lotte finishes for him, "Perfect," and with that they’re running the way naked barefoot people do across gravel, which is delicately, hugging themselves against the chill but laughing too, just to be doing this.

Behind them Proofrock, Idaho, is dark. Before them a long wooden pier is reaching out over the water, pointing them across the lake.

To get their nerve up for how cold this is going to be, once their feet find those wooden planks, Lotte and Sven stretch out and really run, not worried about the chance of nails or splinters or falling. Sven howls up into the vast open space all around them and Lotte snaps a blurry picture of him with her phone.

You brought that? he says, turning around to jog backwards.

Document, document, she says, her arms drawn in like a boxer’s now that Sven’s looking back.

He raises an imaginary camera, takes his own picture of her.

Lotte is looking past him now, though, her eyes not as sure as they just were, her strides shortening, slowing, her hands and elbows going into strategic-coverage mode.

There’s a much closer light flickering at what’s got to be the end of the pier, and it looks for all the world like a fisherman in dark rain gear, holding an old-style lantern up at face level. No, not a fisherman: a lighthouse keeper who hasn’t seen another soul for three years. A lighthouse keeper who thinks that holding his lantern close to his own eyes will improve his vision.

And then the light’s gone.

Sven’s hand finds Lotte’s and they slow to a shuffle, the sky yawning empty and deep above them. All around them.

Wat? Lotte says.

"In American," Sven chides, forcing his smile.

I don’t anymore think we should— Lotte starts, but doesn’t finish because Sven, walking now instead of running, is jumping on his left foot, his right splintered or nailed or stubbed, something sudden and unpleasant.

The light at the end of the pier comes on, curious.

Look, Lotte says to Sven.

When he stops hopping and grabbing at the sole of his foot, the light goes back off.

He nods, getting it, then stomps his hurt right foot down with authority.

The light glows on.

Try it, he says to Lotte.

Hesitant, she does, stomping, getting no response. But then she jumps with both feet, comes down hard enough to jangle whatever bad connection is happening down there.

Gloeilamp isn’t screwed enough, Sven diagnoses, pulling her ahead.

"Screwed in enough," Lotte fixes, traipsing behind.

When they get there, step into that puddle of wavering light, Sven licks the pads of his fingers and reaches up under the rusty cowl to tighten the bulb, the light losing its thready flicker immediately, shining an unwavering cone of warmth down onto their pale thighs now, their shadows stark behind them, bleeding off into the darkness.

"We’re gonna fix this place up right," Sven says, meaning all of America.

Lotte darts in to kiss him on the cheek, then, her eyes locked on Sven’s the whole while, and still holding his fingertips until she can’t, she steps over the end of the pier as easy as anything.

Sven turns his head against the splash, smiling and cringing both, but the splash doesn’t come.

Lotte? he says, stepping forward, shielding his face from the water he knows has to be coming.

She’s in a dark green canoe that’s rocking back and forth—she must have spotted it while he was fiddling with the lightbulb. Sven raises his hands, snaps another make-believe picture of her, says, Cover up, this one’s for the grandchildrens. I want them to see how amazing their grootmoeder was when I first was knowing her.

Lotte purses her lips, unable to hide her smile, and Sven steps down with her, arms wide so as not to roll them.

This isn’t stealing, he says, reaching up to unhook the canoe’s rope. It was just floating here—out there, I mean. We had to swim out even to get it, to save it.

We’re gonna fix this place up! Lotte says as loud as she can around Sven, leaning on the shaky little left-behind cooler to push them away from the pier. She trails her hands in the water and, drifting out from the pier now, can just see their rental car. It looks like a laundry bomb exploded over it. No: it looks like two kids from the Netherlands fizzed away from pure joy, disappeared into nothing, leaving only their clothes behind.

What? Sven asks in perfect American.

We don’t have a paddle, Lotte says. It’s the funniest thing in the world to her. It’s making this little expedition even more perfect.

Or pants, or shirts… Sven adds, taking both sides of the canoe and rocking it back and forth.

"Koude, Lotte agrees, hugging herself. Then, like a dare, Warmer in the water."

Out where it’s diepere, Sven says, correcting himself before she can: "Deeper."

They reach over to paddle with their hands, the water bitter cold, and after about twenty yards of this Sven liberates the white lid off the little cooler. It’s a much better paddle than their hands, and—importantly—it doesn’t care about freezing.

My hero, Lotte says in precise English, pressing herself into his back.

It can be warmer up here too, Sven says, but doesn’t stop drawing them farther out onto the lake.

Lotte presses the side of her face into his back, her new vantage point giving her an angle into the now-open tiny cooler.

Hey! she says, and extracts a clear baggie with a sandwich inside, its peanut butter smearing.

Ew, pindakaas, Sven says, and pulls deep with the cooler lid, surging them ahead.

Lotte unceremoniously shakes the sandwich out into the water without touching it, crosses her finger over her lips so Sven will know not to tell on her about this, then drops her phone into the baggie and neatly seals the top, blowing into it at the very end so the phone is in a make-do balloon.

Your ziplock tas can also be a flotatie device, she says in her best KLM flight attendant voice.

Sven chuckles, says, "Flotation."

The phone in the bag is still recording. Lotte angles it away from her, holds it up so it can see ahead of them.

What do you think they are? Sven asks, nodding to the lights they don’t seem to be any closer to yet.

Giant fireflies, Lotte says with a secret thrill. American fireflies.

"Mastodons met—with bioluminescente tusks," Sven says.

Air jellyfish, Lotte says, quieter, like a prayer.

Isn’t there a tree fungus that’s fosforescerend? Sven asks. Being serious, nu.

"Now, Lotte corrects, still using her wispy-dreamy voice. It’s the Indians. They’re painting their faces and their bodies for revolt."

Until John Wayne Gacy hears about it, Sven says with enough confidence that Lotte has to giggle.

It’s just John Wa— she starts, doesn’t finish because Sven is jerking back from leaning over the side of the canoe, jerking back and pulling his hands up fast, something long stringing from them. He stands shaking it off, trying to, and the canoe overbalances, starts to roll. Instead of letting it, he dives off the other side, his Netherbits mostly hidden from the phone’s hungry eye.

He slips in almost without a sound, just one gulp and gone.

Alone on the canoe now, Lotte stands unsteadily, the back of her hand coming instantly up to her nose, her mouth—the smell from whatever stringy grossness Sven dragged in over the side.

She dry heaves, falls to her knees from it.

They’ve drifted into… what? A mat of algae? Lake scum? At this altitude, snow still in the ditches?

Sven! she calls to the blackness encroaching from all sides now.

She covers herself with her arms, sits on her heels as best she can.

No Sven.

And now she knows what that smell has to be: fish guts. Some men from the town gutted a big haul of them over the side of their boat, the intestines and non-meaty parts adhering together with the congealing blood to make a gooey floating scab.

She coughs again, has to close her eyes to keep from throwing up.

Or maybe it wasn’t a whole net of fish—they can’t do that here in inland America, can they?—but one or two of the really big fish, pulled up from the very bottom of the lake. Sturgeon, pike, catfish?

Sven will know. His uncle is a fisherman.

Sven! she calls again, not liking this game.

Not necessarily in response to her call, probably more to do with his lung capacity, Sven surfaces maybe twenty feet to Lotte’s left.

Gevonden—got it! he’s yelling.

What he’s waving over his head is the bright white lid of the little cooler.

Come back! Lotte calls to him. I don’t want to see the giant fireflies anymore!

Mastodons! Sven yells back, clapping the lid on the water, the sound almost unbearably loud to Lotte, like drawing attention they don’t want. She looks to the lights on the far shore to see if they’re all turning this way.

She gathers her phone-balloon, shakes the camera so it’s facing her, and says into it in perfect English, I hate you, Sven. I’m cold and scared and when you’re asking yourself what you did wrong, why you didn’t get any in the big state of Idaho, you can play this and you can know.

Then she wedges the phone backwards half under the canoe’s bow deck, up against the stem—the pointy hidden corner at the front where you can stuff a ziplock baggie you’ve blown up and hidden a phone inside.

Come to me! Sven says. I don’t want to touch that… that hair again!

It’s not hair! Lotte calls back. It’s fish gut—

What stops her from finishing is the distinct sense that someone was just standing behind her. Which would be impossible, of course, since behind her there’s only the lake. Still, she whips around to the other end of the boat, certain there was a shadow there, just in her peripheral vision, already gone.

It is kelp? Sven’s asking now. Is that how you say it in Engels?

"English," Lotte corrects, losing patience with this.

Fuck English! Sven says back. "Het is haar!"

It’s not hair, though.

If it were hair, that would mean that… Lotte doesn’t know: would it mean that a moose or a bear or a cowboy horse had died out here, or floated out here while dead and bloated, then burst in the heat of the day, geysering blood and gore up in a chunky fountain?

The canoe thunking into something where there should be nothing tells her that’s just what it has to be.

She shrieks, can feel sudden tears on her face, her breath the kind of deep she’s about to lose control of.

"Sven!" she screams, holding hard to the side of the canoe, and now, instead of another thunk, what she hears, fast like little footsteps, is a series of… not quite splashes, but some disturbance on the surface of the water. Fish in a line, jumping? A formation of bats snatching insects from the top of the lake? A rock someone skipped in the daytime, still making it across to the other shore?

She pushes away from whatever it is.

Sven, Sven, Sven! she’s saying, less loud each time, because it feels like her voice is putting a bullseye on her back.

They never should have come to America. This isn’t some big adventure.

Lotte looks back to the pier, to the light she knows is real, and right when she looks is when it blinks off then on again—no, no, it didn’t go off, something passed between her and it.

Seconds later, a profanely intimate sound squelches across the water to the canoe, like a wet ripping. From where Sven was? Is she even still in the same place in relation to him?

Lotte stands, feels more exposed than she ever has, even though she can’t see her own arms.

She falls back, almost over the side, when Sven starts screaming. In Dutch, in English, in human, except more primal—the way you only ever scream once, Lotte knows.

All Lotte can make out is "Wat is er mis met haar mond?" before his voice gargles down, stops abruptly.

Lotte reaches in to paddle back, away, she’s sorry, Sven, she’s sorry, she’s sorry to America too, they shouldn’t have violated her at night, they should have driven all the way around Idaho, she’ll tell everybody, she’ll warn them all away if she can just—

Her arm is up to the elbow in the mat of hair and rot and guts, it’s stringing off her, draping into the canoe, wrapping around her but she doesn’t care, she’s lying on her stomach now to pull harder for the shore, her fingertips pushing down to where the water’s even colder.

Once, twice, twenty times, and then—her hand connects with something solid? Her head is instantly filled with the slow-motion image of a dead horse floating underwater, the pads of her fingers brushing the white diamond between its eyes, her lightest touch pushing the huge dead body drifting down even deeper.

She pulls back, sits up holding her hand to herself like it’s injured, and then what she touched with that hand bobs past.

The white cooler lid, streaked red.

Lotte shakes her head no, no, no, and then, because what else can she do, she rolls over the other side of the canoe, fights through the tendrils of decay, some even going in her mouth, trying to reach down her throat, and then she’s to open water, swimming hard for the dim lights of Proofrock like only an elementary school swim-meet veteran can.

The phone she left behind in its foggy balloon is just recording the empty aluminum canoe now, and one blurry corner of the little cooler. But it’s listening in its muted way.

What it hears is the front part of Lotte’s scream.

She doesn’t get to finish it.

JUST BEFORE DAWN

Jade Daniels slouches—that’s the only word for it—into the staging area for Terra Nova on a twelve-degree night on the thirteenth of March, the Friday before spring break officially gets going for Proofrock.

In the left pocket of her thin custodian coveralls is a box-cutter, what her dad would probably call a shitrock knife, and in her right is her fist. Under her overalls there’s just a girl-cut Misfits t-shirt, probably technically too small if that matters, and her threadbare jeans, most of the holes in the thighs not from washing dishes at the pancake house or moving boxes in a shipping warehouse—Proofrock isn’t big enough for either of those places—but from scraping at the fabric with her fingernails during seventh period, her state history class, which she calls Brainwashing 101. Her fingernails are black, of course, and her hair is supposed to be green, that was the plan one hundred percent, it was going to look killer, but Indian hair doesn’t take the dye like the box says all hair should, so she’s got a bobbed orange mop to deal with, which was what started the fight at her house thirty minutes ago, spitting her up here.

If her dad had just been able to watch her cross from the front door to the hall without saying anything, she’d probably be in her bedroom right now, headphones clamped on, a bootleg slasher crackling on the screen of her thirteen-inch television set with the built-in VCR.

Her dad can never keep his mouth shut, though, especially six beers into a night that’s probably going to take a whole case to get through.

"You got to stop eating so many carrots, girl," he said with a halfway chuckle, punctuating it with a drink from his bottle.

Jade stopped like she had to, like she guesses he must have wanted her to.

His name, Tab Daniels, is the one he earned in high school, because he threaded fishing line back and forth across the headliner glued to the roof of his Grand Prix, festooned it with fishing hooks, and then proceeded to hang enough pull tabs onto those barbed hooks that the headliner finally collapsed onto him one seventy-mile-per-hour night.

The wreck should have killed him, Jade knows. Or wishes. She was already on the way by then, so it’s not like it would have blipped her out of existence. All it would have blipped her to would be a less crappy version of her life, one where she lives with her mother, not her so-called father.

But of course, because she’s doomed to grow up in the same house with her own personal boogeyman, the wreck just broke his bones, Freddy’d his face up, because, as he always tells anybody who doesn’t know to have already left the room, God smiles on drunks and Indians.

Jade would humbly disagree with that statement, being half as Indian as her dad and getting zero smiles from Above, pretty much. Case in point: her dad’s drinking buddy Rexall chuckling about her dad’s orange-hair joke, and tipping his chin up to Jade: "Hey, I got a carrot she can—"

Hating herself for it the whole while, Jade had actually bared her teeth at this, expecting her dad to backhand Rexall, living reject that he is. Or if not backhand him, at least give him an elbow in warning. At the very very least Tab Daniels could have whispered not so loud to his high school bud. Wait till she’s gone, man. Anything would have been enough.

He’d just chuckled in drunk appreciation, though.

Maybe if Jade’s mom were still in the picture, then she could have thrown that maternal elbow, glared that glare, but whatever. Kimmy Daniels’s place is only three-quarters of a mile away from Jade’s living room, but that might as well be another galaxy. One not in Tab Daniels’s orbit anymore—which is exactly the idea, Jade knows.

She also knows that stopping in the living room like she did was a mistake. She should have just kept booking, pushed on, shouldered through the smoke and the jokes, landed in her bedroom. Once you’re stopped, though, then starting again without a comeback, that’s admitting defeat.

She fixed Rexall in her glare.

"My dad was saying that about eating carrots because girls who want to be skinny try to eat only carrots, and the whites of their eyes will sometimes go orange, from overdoing it, she said, touching her hair to make the connection for Rexall. I’m guessing you being such a shit-eater explains the color of your eyes?"

Rexall surged up at this, clattering empties off the coffee table, but Jade’s dad, his eyes never leaving Jade, did hold Rexall back this time.

Rexall’s name is because he used to deal, back in whatever his day was, and Jade’s pretty sure it was exactly that: one single day.

Jade’s dad chewed the inside of his cheek in that gross way he always does, that makes Jade see the knot of spongy scar tissue between his molars.

Got her mother’s mouth, he said to Rexall.

If only, Rexall said back, and Jade had to blur her eyes to try to erase this from her head.

That’s right, just— she started, not even sure where she was going with this, but didn’t get to finish anyway because Tab was standing, stepping calmly across the coffee table, his eyes locked on Jade’s the whole way.

Try me, Jade said to him, her heart a quivering bowstring, her feet not giving an inch, even from the oily harshness of his breath, the ick of his body heat.

This were two hundred years ago… he said, not having to finish it because it was the same stupid thing he was always going on about: how he was born too late, how this age, this era, he wasn’t built for it, he was a throwback, he would have been perfect back in the day, would have single-handedly scalped every settler who tried to push a plow through the dirt, or build a barn, tie a bonnet, whatever.

Yeah.

More like he’d have been Fort Indian #1, always hanging around the gate for the next drink.

Might have to take you over my knee anyway, he added, and this time, instead of continuing with this verbal sparring match, Jade’s right fist was already coming up all on its own, her feet set like she needed them to be, her torso rotating, shoulder locked, all of it, her unathletic, untrained body swinging for the fences.

It should have worked, too. Tab’s head was turned for the last drink in his bottle, and she’d never tried anything like this before, so he wasn’t special on-guard. He had been getting suckerpunched his whole stupid life, though, and had some radar as a result. Either that or God really was smiling on him.

Him, not his daughter.

He caught her fist in his open left hand easy as anything, pulled her face right to his, said, You do not want to do this with me, girl.

Not with, Jade said right into his lips, "to," bringing her knee up into his balls like there was a rocket in her boot heel, and then, in the time it took him to keel over into the coffee table, clattering empty bottles away, Jade was running through the screen door, exploding out into the night, never mind that she wasn’t dressed for it.

The only reason she got her work coveralls at all was that they were hanging on the laundry line, skinned with frost—nobody expected weather to have rolled in over the pass like it had. She didn’t put the coveralls on until the end of the block, though, and when she did she was watching the street the whole time, her eyes the only heat she had anymore.

"Alice," she says to herself now, shuffling through the open gate of the staging area for the Terra Nova construction going on twenty-four/seven across the lake.

Alice, the final girl from Friday the 13th, has sort-of orange hair, doesn’t she?

She does, Jade decides with a cruel smile, and that makes this dye-job not a disaster, but providence, fate. Homage. This is Friday the 13th, after all, the holiest of the holies. But she’s pissed, she reminds herself. There’s no smiling when you’re the kind of pissed she is. All that’s left to do now is turn up somewhere with hypothermia. What she’ll tell Sheriff Hardy is that her dad was partying like always and kicked her out just like last time.

All Jade has to do is tough it out. Go past shivering to something more blue-lipped and dry-eyed. Her loose plan had been to walk down the town pier to get that done—it’s public, it’s dramatic, somebody’ll find her before she’s all the way dead—but then she’d seen the flickering glow from the staging area, had no choice but to moth over.

The flickering glow is a fire, it turns out. Not a bonfire, but… she has to smile when she gets what she’s seeing: the grunts on the night shift have used the front-end loader to scoop up all the wood and trash from around the site, probably their last task before clocking out, and then they left all that trash in the big steel bucket, kept it lifted a foot or so off the ground, and dropped a flame in, probably on a shop towel they held on to until the last finger-burning instant.

Burning’s one way to get rid of a load of trash, Jade supposes. With Proofrock trying to dip down into single digits, maybe it’s the best way.

What gives Jade license to come right up to the fire with the rest of the grunts, by her reasoning at least, are her work coveralls, grimy from afternoons and weekends mopping floors and emptying trash and scrubbing toilets. Her name—JD for Jennifer Daniels—sewn onto her chest in cursive thread proves she’s like them: not important enough to bother remembering, but the front office has to have something to call you when there’s a spill needs taken care of.

Howdy, she says all around, trying for no lingering eye-contact, no extra attention drawn to her. She immediately regrets howdy, is certain they’re going to take that as insult, but it’s too late to reel it back in now, isn’t it?

The one with the yellow aviators—shooting glasses, right?—nods once, leans over to spit into the fire.

The guy beside him with the mismatched gloves backhands Shooting Glasses in rebuke, nodding to Jade like can’t Shooting Glasses see there’s a lady among them?

To show it’s no big deal, Jade leans over into the heat, her frozen face crackling, and spits all she can muster down into the swirling flames, her eyelashes curling back from the heat, it feels like.

The grunt with his faded green Carhartts tucked into his cowboy boots chuckles once in appreciation.

Jade wipes her lips with the back of her bare hand, can feel neither her lips nor the skin of her hand, is just using the brief action to case the place.

It looks the same from inside as it does through the ten-foot chain link: pallets and pallets of building material, ditch witches and scissor lifts, tired forklifts and crusty cement chutes, trucks parked wherever they were when dusk sifted in, brought the real chill with it. The heavy equipment like the front-end loaders and the bulldozers are all herded onto this side of the fenced-in area, the silhouette of the backhoe rising behind like a long-necked sauropod, the crane the undeniable king of them all, its feet planted halfway between this fire and the barge that ferries all this equipment back and forth across Indian Lake.

The day that barge was delivered by a convoy of semis and then assembled on-site, just before Thanksgiving break, it had been enough of an event that a lot of the elementary school classes took a field trip to watch. And ever since that day, Proofrock hasn’t been able to look away. It never seems like that long, flat non-boat can carry one of these ten-ton tractors, but each time it just squats down in the water like it thinks it can, it thinks it can, and then, somehow, it does. Watching through the window during seventh period, Jade hates the way her heart swells, seeing the monstrous backhoe balanced on the nearly-submerged back of the barge again.

Does she want the backhoe to slide off, plummet down to Drown Town under the lake, or does she want the water to just rise and rise around its tall tires, nobody noticing until it’s too late?

Either will do.

At the other end of that ferry trip is Terra Nova, which Jade despises just on principle. Terra Nova is the rich development going up across the lake, in what used to be national forest before some fancy legal maneuvers carved a lip of it out for what the newspapers are calling the most gated community in all of Idaho—So exclusive there aren’t even roads around to it! If you want to get there, you either go by boat, balloon, or you swim, and balloons fare poorly with mountain winds, and the water’s just shy of freezing most of the year, so.

What Terra Nova means, all the articles are proud to reveal, is New World. What one of the incoming residents said, kind of famously, was that when there are no more frontiers, you have to make them yourself, don’t you?

Right now there’s ten mansions going up over there at a pace so breakneck it looks almost like the houses are rising in time lapse.

What those entrepreneurs and moguls and magnates probably don’t know, though, is that if you walk the shore around to the east from Proofrock to Terra Nova, having to tippy-toe along the dam’s spine at a certain point, the one clearing you’ll stumble into will be the old summer camp, long gone to seed: nine falling-down cabins against a chalky white bluff, one chapel with open sides so it’s pretty much just a low roof on pillars, like a church that’s sinking, and a central meeting house nobody’s met at since forever. Unless you count the ghosts of all the kids murdered on those grounds fifty years ago.

To everyone in Proofrock it’s Camp Blood. Give Terra Nova a summer or two, Jade figures, and Camp Blood will be the Camp Blood Golf Course, each fairway named after one of the cabins.

It’s sacrilege, she tells anyone who’ll listen, which is mostly just Mr. Holmes, her state history teacher. You don’t remake The Exorcist, you don’t sequel Rosemary’s Baby, and you don’t be disrespectful about soil an actual slasher has walked across. Some things you just don’t touch. Not that anybody in town cares. Or: everybody likes the fifteen dollars an hour Terra Nova’s smooth-talking liaisons are paying anybody who wants to hire on for the day. Anybody like, say, Tab Daniels. Thus the surge of beer he’s been riding the last couple of months.

The transaction’s not what they think, though, that’s the thing. They’re not selling their time, their labor, their sweat, they’re selling Proofrock. Once Camelot starts sparkling right across Indian Lake, nothing’s ever going to be the same—this rant courtesy of Mr. Holmes. Before, all the swayed-in fences and cars with mismatched fenders on this side of the lake were just the way it was, the way it had always been. Now, with Terra Nova’s Porsches and Aston Martins and Maseratis and Range Rovers rolling through to park at the pier, Proofrock’s cars are going to start seeming like a rolling salvage yard. When people in Proofrock can direct their binoculars across the water to see how the rich and famous live, that’s only going to make them suddenly aware of how they’re not living, with their swayed-in fences, their roofs that should have been re-shingled two winters ago, their packed-dirt driveways, their last decade’s hemlines and shoulder pads, because fashion takes a while to make the climb to eight thousand feet.

As Mr. Holmes put it on one of his sad digressions—it’s his last semester before retirement—Terra Nova wants to make the other side of the lake pretty and serene, nice and pristine. It’s not quite so concerned about Proofrock, which before long is going to be just what gets left behind on the way to something better: cigarettes ground out under boot heels, quick pisses behind tires as tall as a house, little jigs and jags of angle iron pushed into the dirt along with layer after sedimentary layer of lonely washers and snapped-off bolts, which is why no way will Jade be staying here even one more minute than she has to after graduation. That’s a promise. There’s Idaho City, there’s Boise, there’s the whole rest of the world waiting for her. Anywhere but here.

But that, like the hypothermia, is all later.

Right now it’s just rubbing her hands together over the fire, never mind the sparks swirling up. If she flinches from them, she’s a girl, she won’t deserve to be here at this hour.

You all right there? Shooting Glasses asks.

Excellent, Jade says back, giving him a sliver of a grin. You?

Instead of answering, Shooting Glasses tries to make subtle eye contact with the other grunts, except quarters are too close for subtle.

I interrupting something? Jade says all around.

Mismatched Gloves shrugs, which means yes.

Feel like I just barged into a wake, I mean, Jade says, going from face to face.

Good call, Cowboy Boots says while wiping at his nose.

I’m not Catholic, Jade says, pulling back with all of them from a long swirling exhalation of sparks, but isn’t there usually more drinking at a wake?

You’re thinking Irish, Mismatched Gloves says with a sort-of grin.

Let me guess, Jade says. Your name… McAllen? McWhorter? Mc-something?

That’s Scottish, Shooting Glasses says, staring into the fire. "Irish is O’Shaunessy, O’Brien—think luck O’ the Irish, that’s how I remember it."

Which of them has leprechauns? Cowboy Boots asks.

Shh, shh, you’re Indian, man, Shooting Glasses tells him. We’re talking Europe stuff here, yeah?

Me too, Jade says.

You’re a leprechaun? Mismatched Gloves asks, smiling now as well.

Indian, Jade says, and, by way of formal introduction to Cowboy Boots, Blackfoot, my dad tells me.

"Isn’t that Blackfeet?" Shooting Glasses asks.

Montana or Canada? Mismatched Gloves adds in.

Jade doesn’t tell them that, in elementary, until she caught the Montana return address on what turned out to be a Christmas check, she’d always thought she was Shoshone, because those were the Indians her social studies class said were in Idaho. So, being in Idaho, that’s what she must be. But then that return address, and that tribal seal by the address—she’d saved it, kept it hidden alongside her Candyman tape. Too, back in those days she’d had the idea that, since she was starting out half Indian, that as she got bigger and taller—got more and more physical actual blood—someday she’d be full-blood like her dad.

"Blackfeet, she says back with faked authority. What the fuck do you think I said?"

Yeah, Mismatched Gloves says, holding his different-colored hands high and away, not touching this anymore, she sounds Blackfeet all right.

Adopted, Cowboy Boots says about himself, by way of introduction. Could be anything.

What he’s saying is he’s a mutt, Mismatched Gloves says.

"Mutt your ass, Cowboy Boots says back, and Jade files that away: on this job-site, your ass" is the add-on way of turning anything around. Her kind of place.

So who died? she says to whoever’s answering.

He didn’t die, Cowboy Boots says, blinking something away.

Depends on what you consider dead, Mismatched Gloves adds.

Greyson Brust, Shooting Glasses says, being respectful with the name.

Hired on with us, Mismatched Gloves tells Jade, then shrugs an exaggerated shrug, like trying not to

Reviews for My Heart Is a Chainsaw

[rockthered808 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Jade Daniels is my final girl! I don’t know why I waited so long to read this one but wow. This book is everything you could possibly want as a fan of horror. It heavily references all of the big slasher flicks and then some. It had me constantly guessing who the killer was throughout the entire book and just when I KNEW I’d finally figured it out SGJ throws in the mother of all curveballs. It’s right there in front of you the whole time but the way he misdirects you is top tier and makes you go in a completely different direction. If you haven’t picked this one up yet, do yourself a favor and check it out as soon as possible.

[Asher Lords · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Fabulous, One of the very few books about a Native American, much less a Native teen girl, that don’t make me howl with disgust at the inaccuracy and the absolute inability of the author to understand First Nations people. Thanks for that.

[Deja Price · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

It doesn’t pick up until 3/4 through and has way too many sentences ending as a question. This book annoyed me to my core but I finished it anyway. Would not recommend.

[Johannah Timbreblue · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of my top five current favorite books (09/2022). The characters are fully-formed, Eben those who only appear for a moment. I felt like I knew the town, the sheriff, the teacher. The town, the lake, the camp, they're all drawn so realistically I want to visit! In daytime. I also want to read all of Jade's essays for history class! The audio narration is gorgeous and every gasp and every manic meltdown are performed with raw honesty.

[elis de guerre · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW deals in slashers: their history, their tropes, their ways of healing, their lore. But none of that would be interesting, useful, or so inextricably crucial to STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES’ story without Jade, our resident expert in the genre.

Jade is not a model student, but is a fine investigative journalist in the making. She cares about her appearance, but only in the sense of “Will my Indian hair EVER absorb hair dye the way it should?” and “I’ve decided that however angry, rebellious, and/or ‘f**ck the world’ I feel is exactly proportionate to the thickness of my eyeliner.” She desperately wants to make honest human connections, but many people would rather she pretend to be normal — or worse, try to fix her.

She knows a slasher is coming to town, but nobody will believe her. Even as the body count begins to rise.

I have a solid sleep deficit because of this book. I could not put it down until my body started to pull hard shut-downs. But what is one to do with phrases like:

“So she won’t have to see Shooting Glasses standing there looking for her, she fetals down on her side in the bottom of the canoe, the gunwales to either side hiding her and her orange hair, her blue lips, her red left leg, her pitch-black heart.
And she hates it more than anything, but she’s sobbing now.
No, she can never be a final girl.
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, or whatever this festering poison is.”

"But Jefferson Stoakes. None of us knew what to make of . . . what can you even think, when a kid you know turns up dead with a wasp nest not just crammed into his mouth, but kind of in PLACE of his mouth? And one detail Alison Chambers might still know from her dad was that Jefferson he was floating on his BACK. In the WATER. And yellow jackets, they'll avoid water. It gums their wings up or something. Or maybe it's like those baggies of water Dorothy puts up in the patio? You know Dorothy? Dot's? You too young for coffee yet? Give it a year. But we were all just stupid [bleeping] kids back then too -- no insult.”

“But now it's -- Amy Brockmeir, she was EATING, I piss you not. And then she looked up to me over the Trigo girl. What was left of her, I mean. Amy's hair was matted up, her nightgown all in rags. The lower part of her face was all black with -- well, with what she'd [serious bleep] been doing to the dam keeper's daughter.”

“The corner in the wall over by the copy machine is actually a giant fold in-process, and Jade, inside that white envelope, has checkboxes for eyes. The stool she’s stuck on has a sticky surface some greater tongue has already licked. Meg is a greasy black hair that’s fallen into the works to mess everything up, one Jade can’t quite pinch up or flick away.“

And perfectly nailed bits of humor, like:
“ “If anybody calls—” Hardy starts, “Route them through Dispatch,” Meg finishes. “And then tell you who they are, of course.”
“My Girl Friday,” Hardy says, sweeping past.
Jade has no idea what kind of pornographic pet name that might be, and doesn’t think she wants to know.”

You have no choice. You keep reading.

There is one last I want to share so badly, but it would ruin an enormous side plot and rob you of the emotional impact I was able to both enjoy and mourn. You’ll find it for yourself. You’ll know.

If you’re still on the fence, know MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW has inspired me to write an essay about what counts as a slasher in today’s society, what most people think it is and what I feel strongly able to argue it ACTUALLY is — thanks, Stephen, for educating me.

The mainstays of slashers are:
1. A person is transformed by significant, mainly childhood trauma that sets them up to take on a murderous future.
2. A trauma trigger (usually on a commemorative day or when seeing a person related to the original trauma) calls out to the traumatized person until they sink into a villain’s mindset, on a mission to take revenge.
3. The killings begin, often through the lens of the villain stalking and killing individuals. Each murder involves gore, and/or an unusual method of murder / weapon. As the slasher ramps up, there is less and less time between kills.
4. The survivors generally find these bodies themselves and the police are useless in assisting the survivors.
5. At the climax, there is a murderous rampage stopped by divine intervention, a hero’s battle/sacrifice, a final girl who has trauma of her own but regains personal power through vanquishing the killer, etc..
6. The reader experiences displacement, a psychiatric defense mechanism that transfers the reader’s feelings or reactions to the text, where it is easier to bear; recreation, a word first used to describe a concept of recovery, restoration, and growth; and catharsis, a purge of the negative and a cleansing / purifying process. In other words, by reading a slasher, readers take time to align their emotional baggage onto the text, taking time and space enough to allow for a recovery and growth process to take place, one that centralizes letting go of the harmful thoughts and feelings displaced onto the book and feeling purified as a result.

This being true, there is a controversial path where today’s slashers rest, waiting to become tomorrow’s classics. But wait on that for now. I’m still shopping it around.

Instead, I’ll tell you where the great slashers aren’t. They’re beyond the remakes, torture/gore p*orn, slasher comedy, and call-backs to the Golden Age, like Fear Street, It Follows, The Invisible Man, etc.

They wait in a Greek amphitheater for an audience ready to put its suffering down and be purified with the help of a Final Girl who’ll “turn around, scream into his face that she's so sick of this, that this is ENOUGH, that this is over. And then, in a move not matched in all the years since, not even by Sidney Prescott, not even by slow motion Alice when Pamela Voorhees won't stop coming at her, not even by Jamie Lee Curtis in that long dark night of Haddonfield, Constance climbs up her slasher's frontside and because she has no weapon, because she IS the weapon, she forces her hand into her slasher's mouth, down his throat, and then she reaches in deeper, and comes out with his life pulsing in her fist.

To put it in conclusion, sir, final girls are the vessel we keep all our hope in. Bad guys don't just die by themselves, I mean. Sometimes they need help in the form of a furie running at them, her mouth open in scream, her eyes white hot, her heart forever pure.”

[roeschleisure · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book was a challenge at times but got better as it moved along. I am not sure the interjection of school papers on the horror genre moved the story but they sure were interesting. Jones is one of the new masters of horror writing. The indigenous aspect is not only cool but makes perfect sense within the context of the story.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book sucked me in almost from the moment I picked it up, and for the first half of it, I couldn't stop reading it. I was in love with the voice, the style, the compulsively readable plot--pretty much everything. Though the voice was sometimes exhausting, it was exhausting in a good way, pulling me along and taking me back to the days of being a teenager with all of the angst/doubt/wonder/imagination/outsiderness involved. (Make no mistake, though, this is not a YA book--it's an Adult book with a teenaager protagonist, and there is a big difference.) So, why did it take me so long to finish, and why did I call such attention to the first half being so readable? That's more complicated, and to be fair, I'm not sure how much is related to the book and how much to me. I was reading this with my book club, and at a certain point, I stopped being able to keep up simply because I didn't have quite enough time. And then I was on to reading another book with them, and this one got left in the dust for a week or so. And then when I did get back to it, the adrenaline rush of the last third of the book especially was just...well, a lot. Kind of like an action movie where the action just never stops, so there's not enough of an emotional ride or enough of a break from the action to really appreciate what's unfolding. I understand why the book unfolded as it did, and I enjoyed the whole of it in a lot of ways...but the last third is one long adrenaline ride, and that part wore on me a bit. At the same time, I was dealing with a lot of stress (including a hurricane evacuation and lack of electricity), so maybe that exhaustion was partly on me? It's hard to tell, but what it comes down to is that for much of the read this was a five-star book for me, and then it dropped a star by the end simply because the last third was so break-neck that I was being rushed along more than engaged for a lot of it.Still, I'd recommend the book to horror lovers, and I'm absolutely looking forward to reading more of Jones' work.

[whiskeyinthejar-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

2.5 starsI received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. Some things you just don't touch.If you ever wanted Randy from Scream to be the star of the show, My Heart is a Chainsaw would be the story for you. Told from first person pov and literary past tense, Jennifer Daniels is a seventeen year old high school senior who uses her love of slasher films to write Slasher 101 extra credit papers to help her pass history class. Her history teacher, Mr. Holmes, sighing accepts them as she ties in the town's, Proofrock, ID, gory history. The town has a Camp Blood, a sleepaway camp where children were murdered, a past fire that burned people, and Indian Lake, where little girl Stacey Graves was murdered, a preacher drowned, and more recently, the sheriff's daughter was killed. The lake is seeing more action as rich developers are building luxury homes across the lake from Proofrock, bringing in new people (redherrings) and stirring up old and present issues.No, Jade will never be any kind of final girl, she knows, and has known for years.I loved how the story started out, two Dutch teens touring America decide to take a canoe out in the lake and skinny dip. It brought in that sense of glee, as all horror fans know where this is going and while we get the dread and murder, the question of why and how is left unanswered as the story does that shift from dark to light, a town that has no idea what is coming. Except we have our Randy, or Jennifer who has tried to reinvent herself as Jade, so she can be the girl that knows all about slashers and not known as something else. When she learns about the death of someone in the lake (the Dutch boy's body is found), she's gung-ho that a slasher has come to her town, especially since one of the rich girls from across the lake has Final Girl written all over her. Everybody has a function, everybody in a slasher cycle has a role— isn’t that a line from the Bible, even?A problem I have with newer slashers is that they take too long to get to the gory fun, and this story falls into that. The ramblings of Jade about how everything she is seeing and in her life that she ties, compares, and sees alluding to slasher movies takes up way too much time. I love slashers, so I enjoyed the name dropping of so many (unless I missed it, sad Chopping Mall didn't make the cut but grinned at Thankskilling) but after the numerous Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street references, even I was ready for the story move on; I can see many fighting some boredom in the beginning middle. Getting to know Jade and her life, is intricate to the end and following her allows readers to get to know the fodder, excuse me, townspeople but it all takes too much time.Maybe, since the slasher’s been going for nearly four decades, the only way to still surprise is by breaking its rules.The last 65% is where the show really gets going and while there were some nicely gory scenes, readers still don't get to “see” the slashing as redherrings are still playing a part and Jade doesn't come in until the killings are done. Instead of enjoying the danger, thrills, and fighting to stay alive, the tone was still cloaked in a bewildering and confused mist as Jane and the reader still don't know what is happening. The last 20% gave the reveals and frankly, it was a mess of too many threads coming from every direction. Jade's own trauma comes to the forefront in the middle of the slayings and while it's supposed to be this big emotional moment, it didn't feel like it had created space in the story for me as the reader to really get there. Some girls just don’t know how to die.If I didn't know that this was being turned into a trilogy, I would be annoyed with the ending and probably lower the rating. We get the killing reveals but then Jade has another tie-in to her emotional trauma that, again, felt out of place and not hitting right. As it is, knowing Jade's story continues, I'm curious about the sequel and how Jade will prevail against a video taken of her that shows the facts but not the truth, who some surprise survivors could be, and if she'll have another battle with the Lake Witch. If some of the repeated Nightmare on Elm Street and the like, Final Girl talk had been condensed, and some plot threads cut to strengthen others, I think the shorter page count would have served this story better. As it was, I did enjoyed the slasher talk, some unexpected elements, and Jade's fight for survival, physically and emotionally.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the second book I've read by Stephen Graham Jones. He is able to tell a story. This is the story of a young gals fascination with slasher movies and her way of coping with her life. I never watch them but needless to say I learned everything there is about the slasher movies. I found it curious that two books came out in 2021 that are both about final girls, an element of the slasher movies; Grady Hendrix's book The Final Girl Support Group and My Heart is a Chainsaw.

[ridgewaygirl · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Jade has learned to lean into being the scary girl, the one who smokes and is obsessed with slasher films, the one who stands on her own off to the side with a disdainful expression on her face. In the small mountain town in Idaho where she grew up, she stands out. But just around time for her to graduate from high school and leave the town of Proofrock behind her forever, things start to happen, things that only Jade can see are linked together, very bad things. And now she has to try to prepare people for what is coming, from the new girl Jade recognizes as a "final girl," to the chief of police, to the retiring high school history teacher who is the closest thing she has to a friend. But just knowing bad things are happening is not enough to stop them sometimes.This is the first of a trilogy and the author's homage to the slasher movies of the seventies and eighties (with more than a few shout-outs to the Scream franchise). It's certainly a testament to both Jones's writing and his sheer enthusiasm that I happily kept turning pages despite how much slasher films bore me. Jade is both a delightful character and a dark one and the way Jones kept the tone of the novel flipping between lightness and horror was engaging.

[sturlington_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Seventeen-year-old Jade is stuck as the town bad girl in her small-town life in Idaho, but she escapes through slasher movies. When the new pretty girl in town discovers a body in the lake, Jade fixates on her as a "final girl" in the slasher she is convinced is finally coming to real life in her town. Jones has a quirky writing style that's turned on full force here, since the point of view is a teenage girl who drops movie references as much as she possibly can and likes to end her sentences with question marks. This gave the novel something of a frenetic quality that prevented me from fully connecting with it at first. Those references do fulfill a purpose, though, as becomes clear in the book's final over-the-top, gore-filled, cinematic scenes. It did seem like pretty much everything got tossed into this book, though, and I would have appreciated some more layers to it beyond the abuse angle. Or maybe it did, but they weren't delineated enough to have the impact they should have. Jones, as usual, is an exciting writer, but I thought this lacked the emotional weight or cultural insight of The Only Good Indians.

[Josh · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Really good book with really likeable characters, and a fun mystery. Highly recommended to anyone who likes Slashers. However the last act is a total fustercluck for better or for worse

[clrichm · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Oddly enough, perhaps, one of the things that immediately struck me upon finishing the book was the symmetry of it: going from the idea that the threat will be supernatural to that it’s actually a human killer, and then to the suspicion that perhaps the entire thing is the delusion of an unreliable narrator, and then cycling back through “yeah, human killer” and landing on “witch spirit kill-kill-kill.”My head spun.Perhaps it was a little too complicated/deliberately nebulous, but for the most part it was really well-written. The epilogue was…huh…but then I read that a sequel is coming, so that makes more sense now.Still want to know about Letha and the “how did she” thing.

[sennebec · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Definitely not for the squeamish, but for those who aren't, this is a very well crafted story of a teen girl who's locked-in on the slasher genre of films. Her encyclopedic knowledge of them is blended with mysterious deaths in her small Idaho town and historical events that add to the growing tension between Jade and many in her life. Is her obsession and prophecy regarding what she believes is an impending massacre real, or part of her defense mechanism regarding events in her past? Add in a strange cast of characters, some local, others mega rich who are building a fancy bunch of homes across the lake, plus a gradual ramping up of the tension and body count, and you have a terrific horror tale.

[stretch_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A teen obsessed with slasher films, in a small town, begins noticing the patterns of a slasher flick come to life. Jade our teen protagonist is a very damaged girl, neglect, abuse, and low standards have dragged her down. And like many residents of this small mountain town, she needs an escape. She chooses horror. Giving her an insight to the strange going happenings that no else sees as anything more than a battle with rich, entitled folks destroying their peaceful habitat. There are plenty of hidden secrets and dark history in town boiling beneath the surface, perfect for the classic slasher setup. After stumbling upon the 'final girl', Jade hatches a plan of education and indoctrination in her well versed subject, to prepare the final girl for her inevitable battle. The final chapters unleash plenty of gore and tragedy fitting of the slasher genre.On its merits, My Heart is Chainsaw is good. Jones is able to create a damaged, selfish character that is likeable and while obsessive, still functions in the world. It's a very literary type horror, the writing is elevated to something a bit better than your typical horror story. The slasher 101 asides are fun. Everything works together and when Jade comes to terms with her personal demons, it is cathartic. In every way this is an excellent book, except the climax goes completely hare wire in an orgy of blood, that is both hard to follow and breaks with the logic of the slasher. If only we didn't try to kill the entire town off in a single orgy could this had been a better and even more drawn out story.

[dagon12 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's been said in a bunch of reviews that this book is a love letter to slasher films. It might be a tad more accurate to say the heart of the book is slasher films. I consider myself a pretty big horror fan but throughout the book I had to stop and look up a slasher film that was referenced. Or look up a name that was mentioned because I knew it was in some horror movie but I didn't know which. My Netflix and Amazon Prime watchlists both had multiple films added to them as a result of MY HEART IS A CHAINSAW.Jade Daniels is a half-Indian teenager in a small town; she lives with her abusive father and wants nothing more than to be rid of the town. Her one solace is slasher films. Her knowledge and love far surpasses Jamie Kennedy's character in "Scream". Then when blood spills and people start to die, Jade knows exactly how things will go. Or she thinks she does.Jones does an amazing job with the novel. His love and understanding and passion for slash films comes through from start to end. Jade tells us the rules while the book follows them. And then deviates. Or does it? The meta-feeling of fitting the book into the formula runs throughout the length. Then all that changes and is no longer important because at the very end Jones gives a gut punch that I should have seen coming but was too distracted to see. Something so emotional that I was left stunned. He did the same thing to me when I read THE ONLY GOOD INDIANS. I'm not going to give anything away. You should simply read this book and enjoy! Stephen Graham Jones is an amazing author.

[toric90 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this - but I can see how it could be a little difficult as a physical read. The audiobook was a great way to go for a first read through. This was my first book by this author, but from this book I feel like SGJ is so intentional with his writing and storytelling that I will have to go back and annotate because there was SO MUCH there and I feel like most of it had a reason and that’s why I didn’t mind the “ramble” of Jade. The audio also made it feel more like Jade was telling you a story through the only perspective she knows how to relate to the world - which is through slasher movies. I would classify this as a thinker. I don’t know that I would call it an all time favorite but I do think I will purchase and reread and keep thinking about it for quite a while.

[tibobi · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The Short of It:Dark. An homage to slasher films of the 80s.The Rest of It:Jade Daniels is an angry young woman living in the small town of Proofrock. Forced to live with her abusive father, she takes comfort in the form of slasher films, especially ones where the killer deals out revenge for something, think Jason from Friday the 13th. Her knowledge of such films is extensive. So much so that it spills into her schoolwork. As the story unfolds, some of it is told through the term paper she is about to submit. Slasher 101.Something is amiss in Proofrock though. Two young people were ripped to shreds by something while out on the lake. The town calls it a bear attack. Jade sees it for what it is, the beginning of all slasher films and immediately acts to find the killer.This was a very strange read. It reminded me a lot of American Horror Story: 1984, which brought up the concept of “the final girl”. You know the girl. The one that lives at the end of the killing spree. Jade pieces things together but in doing so, has to also find the final girl. It can’t be her. She is not final girl material. When she finds her, the action quickly ramps up and it’s hard to keep track of who is alive and who is dead. It’s a crazy ride.I’m not sure this book is for everyone. Yes, horror fans will enjoy it to a degree but it’s very surreal in the telling. By the end of the book, I was fully into the characters but also felt like I had been taken for a wild ride. It is very different. I anxiously waited for this book to come in for the RIP Challenge but although it totally fits the challenge, it wasn’t the atmospheric read I was hoping for.For more reviews, visit my blog: Book Chatter.

[veronica.sparrow · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The book was a bit hard to get into at first but it did pick up. It's basically a homage to the slasher genre. The main character is a girl named Jade and I found the complexity of her character fascinating. I find Stephen Graham Jones novels quirky, unique and very deftly written.

[caseyadamsstark · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What can I say about My Heart is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones. It's a mess. Why give it 5 stars then, you say? Because it's a mess as seen through the lens of a very messed up main character, Jade Daniels, and that messed up, hyperactive, suicidal point of view rings true. Jade's character has some major issues, and a mind that is all over the place as she tries to navigate the hell that is her life. There’s a good chance that you won’t like her from the start, but cut her some slack. She really deserves it..Jade isn’t even her real name, but it suits her because she’s become so jaded by the people in her life, that her only outlet for pleasure is horror movies. Slashers in particular. And this is where Jade proves that she has a brilliant mind, something to offer the world, if the world wasn’t so cruel. She buries herself so deep in slasher movie lore that, when things start to go awry in her small and picturesque Idaho town, she’s the only one who sees it coming. Because she knows how slashers work. And does that scare her? No. That excites her because she has nothing to really live for, except in terms of a slasher movie, and what a way for her to go out. For her, it’s ending on a high note.Jade will come to that end with a shocking revelation, something that she refuses to admit to herself from the start. She can never be the final girl in this nightmare come true for a very specific reason. But she can play her part, and she struggles with that.Of course, if you’re a true horror movie aficionado, you’re in for a treat. I consider myself a mid level horror aficionado—I remember writing a paper in my college days about the importance of horror films as social commentary, so when Jade writes extra credit homework for her history teacher doing essentially the same, I could really relate. Also, Jaws and The Shining are two iconic movies that shaped my own movie viewing tastes in a big way. What I’m getting to is that it doesn’t hurt to be a horror movie fan on some level. Or even an 80’s movie fan. I felt like there were a few nods to movies like The Breakfast Club and Heathers too.I highly recommend this book. The only dissatisfaction I have is with its symbolic end that I wish had more closure regarding Jade and the mother who essentially abandoned her. The metaphor is clearly apparent but it doesn’t quite reflect how it turned out for Jade.Thank you, NetGalley and Gallery Books for the opportunity to read this ARC.

[jjbooklvr · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am continuously amazed at how each of the author's books are so different and yet get to the heart of what a good horror book should be. A must read for slasher movie fans that takes you right to the edge and then gleefully jumps over with both feet!

[purplepaste-311796 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I read, loved, and assigned The Only Good Indians in my American Literature course. My Heart Is a Chainsaw has a teenaged female lead and fully formed secondary characters. I found the action harder to follow due to the filtering of the action through the rather unreliable narrator. It felt almost like American Psycho when trying to determine if the action was *really* taking place or not. It also felt like there were intentional plot holes. So, full of horror tropes! The school papers folded into the book throughout were fun and gave a different perspective of the main character. I only wish I got papers like those! This is the third "final girl" novel I've read this year, and it is the most believable of the narrators.
I ended the book with a lot of questions. Who was actually the killer? Why were the better father figures murdered? Why so much jaw-based gore? Why were the Danish kids killed?

[richardderus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.My Review: There are all sorts of ways to read a Stephen Graham Jones book. Surfaces work...there's always a story hanging around, you won't be wandering lost in thickets of writing-armpit sweat-watered weeds...references work too, you can unpick your memories of the midnight movies or frightfrests your friends threw (or open IMDb if you're really young)...but I think the best way is to make it through as it's happening, to be there as Jade walks across the graduation stage or through walls or up into skies limited only by the basic laws of physics.The reason I feel that last works best is that, by the time I'd reached the end of this read, and then read Author Stephen's Acknowledgments after the wrenching and impossibly sad final scene, I was so wrung out that I simply accepted that everything I'd just been through had been intended to do what it did to me. As I'm not one to write book reports (ask Mr. Singleton! never turned so much as one in during high school) I'm not going to try to do that at this late date. I referred to this book's immediate older sibling, The Only Good Indians, as "gore with more" and that's an assessment I stand by as applied to all of Author Stephen's books. Part of that "more" is the strangely hypnotic effect of the story arc receding from view...the interstitial "SLASHER 101" essays addressed to the One Good Teacher (of history, naturally) Mr. Holmes are well and truly weirding Your Faithful Reader out. When they switch addressees, it gets even weirder...but in the end, it's painfully intimate and deeply instructive to read them.In common with all Author Stephen's books, you mere peon of a purchaser have no rights. You're not stupid, you've read some of his other work (at least The Only Good Indians!), you're aware that horror is in store. So surrender your volition. Then the entire experience of being in Jade Daniels's rage-filled head makes all the sense in the world. Because then you're not actually sure if ANY of this is happening in meatspace. Is this an adolescent with anger and abandonment issues responding to the end of what never was childhood? Is this a young woman processing the pain and rage of a life that was wished on her by weaker, worse people than she was? There's a sparkling moment of fizzing delight when Jade meets Letha, a beautiful rich kid whose father has a trophy wife and whose presence in the town of "Proofrock" (think a minute, and hard, for more than the surface snicker; that's all it takes to turn it into a shiver), when Jade anoints her "the Final Girl." That's both when the tale gets grounded in consensus reality and when its ascent into the dark and cold vault of Jade's own head is cemented.I'm always a fan of gerunding done with panache...Author Stephen does it with panache. At one point, Jade Holden Caulfields across a lawn, and that's me dead cackling. I think there are few greater pleasures than easter-egging your readers' experience...hoping they'll get most of them. I think the fun of reading a book whose author has chosen a niche to write in, one with an astoundingly vast mythos/history/background to explore, is in part the recognition factor of word-play. Yes, it's about slasher-film homage, and no Holden Caulfield isn't slashed to death (though generations of English students have no doubt fantasized that Salinger met that fate after writing it), but he *is* the prototype of the Angsty Teen too smart for easy answers. With everything Jade's carrying around, she's not one whit less burdened than Holden and possibly by some similar troubles given that she's got A Thing growing up strong for Letha.Adolescent sexuality is always fraught. Parents play their roles in shaping it, either with rule or without them, with clamp-downs or without supervision, there's no right way to ride this roller-coaster. But the issue facing Jade isn't made any easier by her absolute conviction that Letha is The Final Girl, that staple of the slasher film, therefore of necessity being lustrous and almost superhuman in her glorious Otherness. That's how she's supposed to be, right? Jade "doesn't make the rules...just happens to know them all." Her unique and defining obsession with slashers is gong to pay dividends, right? Because she's preparing the Final Girl for her role, unlike most...she won't be surprised by the tragedies.I think I speak for all readers when I say that the way this blows up can only be described as FUCKING EPIC.And from that point on, the cigarette boat is away and the pace does not let up.There are the obligatory twists and turns, the reveals that aren't *quite* reveals, and the accustomed ways that Author Stephen's practiced to get your kishkes kicking and your shvitzer sprinkling. You can't fault the man on delivering the suspenseful goods! If you're in the market for a low-gore delivery of suspense, however, look elsewhere. The way this works is for your expectations to be manipulated so I won't be discussing particulars. Suffice to say I was taken in. More than once. And I'm a pretty well-broken-in reader....Still, there's no point it wondering why no good deed goes unpunished or how exactly it is that one's expected to walk away from what can not help but feel like a set up straight from a film. The pain and the passionate pull of it will reach some screeching crescendo, won't it, just give it a little more time and it has to!Nonsense, says the Great God Author.By the time we've reached the moment when there is no more to give, when the entire story's gone to the most extreme place that it can go...there is something more in the tank for a send-off, and there's no way that you'll believe your eyes when you get there.Some things just can't be put right. And others can't be left wrong. The issue is...who decides.

[theyodamom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Slasher movie fans will love this story. Imagine living through a combination of slasher movies in real life. Where you play one of the characters, the director or the misunderstood youth ? Hold on this book will take you there.I felt like I was walking though was it deep mud while drunk trying to understand this story. I struggled, it seemed to take forever to finish, I should have quit but I have loved this authors books before. I didn’t understand most of the references to horror movies, so I didn’t get how they connected to the characters of the moment. Many parts I had to read 2-3 times to understand, other I just gave up and moved on. It felt so complicated. I was frustrated, I could feel the brilliance but couldn’t connect. I may not have enjoyed reading it but I am amazed at the genius in the writing and weaving the movies/characters and actions together to fit. It ended. I was left feeling sad for one character I think, were they broken, brilliant or just crazy ? The book left me questioning this till the end. I have to give this a good rating for the writing.

[bibliovermis · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Heartrending, in every sense of the word. A half-Indian girl full of fierce, piercing rage, whose life's one solace is slasher films, is thrilled when signs begin to point to the slasher she's been waiting and hoping for having come to her small Idaho town. Jade watches the unfolding events and predicts the next steps, and like an angry teen Cassandra even tries to spread the word—though she knows, like all good horror film buffs, that no authority figure will believe her or be of any use. But what she doesn't expect is also the last thing she wants—that through her unheeded warnings and explanations of the developing horror, someone might begin to decipher her own history, and what lies beneath her pain and episodes of self-harm. Bloody, funny, grotesque, and a great read. Jade's thoughts on the cleansing cycle of the slasher movie, from first blood to final girl, are presented between chapters in the form of her essays for a sympathetic high school teacher and are fascinating for entry- and expert-level horror fans alike.

[christilee394 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The pacing in the first half of this novel was slow, but it did pick up in the back half. It was not a deterrent and I found it enjoyable. Mainly, because I could feel that the story was building to something...building to something big. The, "Ahh, I see what you did there" moment. Definitely a love letter to all slasher movies and people that love the genre. Even though this was not a favorite of mine from Stephen Graham Jones, he goes all out! Especially the ending, whoa, NAILED IT!

[jfe16 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Review of advance uncorrected reader’s proofSeventeen-year-old slasher film-obsessed Jade [never to be called Jennifer or Jenn] Daniels is an angry young woman who can’t wait until she graduates and can leave the small lakeside town of Proofrock behind forever. She feels as if she’s an outcast in a town that doesn’t want anything to do with her even as she deals with an abusive father and an absent mother.Jade may not have the things she most desires, but she understands slasher films as well as she understands the horror that befalls the town when Indian Lake turns bloody. But will she be able to convince the new girl that she’s really come to Proofrock to be the Final Girl?In this veneration to the slasher film trope, Jade is the empathetic central character. Complicated, gritty, introspective, and heart-rending, it is a story that grabs readers and doesn’t let go. The plot twists a bit, leading to an unexpected denouement in the epilogue. Interspersed throughout the telling of the tale are chapters of Jade’s “Slasher 101” paper for Mr. Holmes, her state history teacher. Although highly informative . . . and offering intriguing insights into the young woman’s thoughts . . . they tend to disrupt the flow of the story being told. Nevertheless, fans of slasher films will find much to appreciate here, and readers who aren’t so well-acquainted with that particular genre may well learn a thing or two, especially when it comes to the final girl.Recommended.I received a free copy of this eBook from Gallery Books -- Gallery / Saga Press and NetGalley #MyHeartisaChainsaw #NetGalley

[sublunarie · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I'm clearly in the minority here, but this was not a good book.If all it took to write a good horror novel was to drop as many horror film references as possible in every conceivable sentence, then why aren't we all writing books? I was not impressed by the horror encyclopedia of Jade (which we know is really just the horror encyclopedia of the author), I was annoyed.The plot of the novel actually plays second fiddle to the incessant horror name-dropping and gets murkier and murkier as the book progresses. Unresolved plot threads are expected in low-budget horror films, but when you're writing a 400 page book you truly have no excuse.None of the characters are likeable. The plot is a mess. The walls of inner monologue are brutal reading. You'd be better off reading 1001 Horror Films You Need To See Before You Die.