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My Heart Is a Chainsaw
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
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My Heart Is a Chainsaw

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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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.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateAug 31, 2021
ISBN9781982137656
Author

Stephen Graham Jones

STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES was raised as pretty much the only Blackfeet in West Texas - except for his dad and grandma and aunts and uncles and cousins. He now lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife, a couple kids, and too many old trucks. Between West Texas and now, he's published more than twenty books, including the novels The Fast Red Road, Ledfeather, and Mongrels, and the short story collections After the People Lights Have Gone Off, States of Grace, and The Ones that Got Away. Stephen’s been the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Fiction, the Texas Institute of Letters Jesse Jones Award for Fiction, the Independent Publishers Awards for Multicultural Fiction, three This is Horror awards, and he’s made Bloody Disgusting’s Top Ten Novels of the Year. Stephen teaches in the MFA programs at University of Colorado at Boulder and University of California Riverside-Palm Desert.

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Rating: 4.01811574057971 out of 5 stars
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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.”

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    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!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    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
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    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.

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My Heart Is a Chainsaw - Stephen Graham Jones

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