[Book Review] My Heart Is a Chainsaw (2021)
Stephen Graham Jones made a big splash last year when his award-winning novel The Only Good Indians hit shelves. On August 31, he returns to answer the question on everyone’s minds: How do you follow that?
His reply is the slasher lore-filled novel My Heart Is a Chainsaw; like Scream if Scream were actually about being an Indigenous teenage girl watching modern-day colonization insidiously take over her hometown as she copes with her outsider status and beer-guzzling father.
Yes, there is a lot going on.
The new novel follows Jade, a Blackfeet teen living in the lake town of Proofrock, Idaho, surrounded by forest park lands. When a small group of rich settlers begin carving out trees across Indian Lake to make way for their mansion-sized homes (aptly naming their community Terra Nova), Jade becomes obsessed with the Final Girl qualities of newcomer Letha Mondragon. As a body count begins to mount with suspicion cast all around, she becomes all the more convinced that the town of Proofrock is barreling toward a slasher-ific finale that only Letha can stop.
My Heart Is a Chainsaw is interwoven with Jade’s well-researched slasher knowledge, alternating chapters between story and Slasher 101. Within the narrative itself, Jade’s internal monologue can hardly keep from referencing both well-known and obscure, often forgotten, horror films, her relentlessly singular focus making her excitement at living through a real-life slasher palpable.
But underneath Jade’s obsession with fiction, there are much darker truths.
No one can tell a story as sad as it is bloody like Jones, who somehow manages to make readers feel the entire gamut of emotion whether he’s writing a novel or novella. Jade is a convincing teenage protagonist with a fully realized voice; darkly funny, sometimes nihilistic, tragic and enduring.
Jones shines in the act of pushing and pulling readers, giving plenty of fodder for theories as to the source of the gruesome killings in Proofrock. The references to A Bay of Blood are well-earned; anyone and everyone could be culpable.
My Heart Is a Chainsaw is an exciting, unforgettable entry into the horror novel canon, begging for adaptation to the screen. A book that is ultimately so much bigger than the sum of its parts, it will keep readers guessing up until the last minute, with a finale that lingers for days.
![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe76a518d20536a3fbd7246/1629803680367-YCVCB2QXG5POS2L60RFL/5+star.png)
When people think of horror films, slashers are often the first thing that comes to mind. The sub-genres also spawned a wealth of horror icons: Freddy, Jason, Michael, Chucky - characters so recognisable we’re on first name terms with them. In many ways the slasher distills the genre down to some of its fundamental parts - fear, violence and murder.
Throughout September we were looking at slasher films, and therefore we decided to cover a slasher film that could be considered as an underrated gem in the horror genre. And the perfect film for this was Franck Khalfoun’s 2012 remake of MANIAC.
In the late seventies and early eighties, one man was considered the curator of all things gore in America. During the lovingly named splatter decade, Tom Savini worked on masterpieces of blood and viscera like Dawn of the Dead (1978), a film which gained the attention of hopeful director William Lustig, a man only known for making pornography before his step into horror.
Looking for some different slasher film recommendations? Then look no fruther as Ariel Powers-Schaub has 13 non-typical slasher horror films for you to watch.
Even though they are not to my personal liking, there is no denying that slasher films have been an important basis for the horror genre, and helped to build the foundations for other sub-genres throughout the years.
But some of the most terrifying horrors are those that take place entirely under the skin, where the mind is the location of the fear. Psychological horror has the power to unsettle by calling into question the basis of the self - one's own brain.
On Saturday, 17th June 2023, I sat down with two friends to watch The Human Centipede (First Sequence) (2009) and The Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence) (2012). I was nervous to be grossed out (I can’t really handle the idea of eating shit) but excited to cross these two films off my list.
Many of the most effective horror films involve blurring the lines between waking life and a nightmare. When women in horror are emotionally and psychologically manipulated – whether by other people or more malicious supernatural forces – viewers are pulled into their inner worlds, often left with a chilling unease and the question of where reality ends and the horror begins.
Body horror is one of the fundamental pillars of the horror genre and crops up in some form or another in a huge variety of works. There's straightforward gore - the inherent horror of seeing the body mutilated, and also more nuanced fears.
RELATED ARTICLES
Happily, her new anthology The Book of Queer Saints Volume II is being released this October. With this new collection, queer horror takes center stage.
It's fitting that Elizabeth Hand's novel Wylding Hall (2015) won the Shirley Jackson Award; her writing echoes and pays homage to the subtle scariness and psychological horror of Shirley Jackson's works.
Penance is Eliza Clark’s eagerly awaited second novel following her debut Boy Parts, which found much love and notoriety in online reading circles.
However Nat Segaloff’s book The Exorcist Legacy: 50 Years of Fear is a surprising and fascinating literary documentation of the movie that caused moviegoers to faint and vomit in the aisles of the cinema.
Nineteen Claws And A Black Bird packs in plenty of sublime and disturbing short stories across its collection.
Gretchen Felker-Martin’s Manhunt, a novel that holds both horror and heart in equal regard, a biting and brilliant debut from one of horror-fiction’s most exciting names.
Moïra Fowley’s debut adult work is a shapeshifting and arresting short story collection which looks at the queer female body through experiences both horrific and sensual.
Bora Chung’s bizarre and queasy short stories were nominated for the 2022 International Booker Prize and it’s no surprise why.
A girl stands with her back to the viewer, quietly defiant in her youthful blue-and-white print dress, which blends in with a matching background
Hear Us Scream Vol II is a collection of over thirty essays from horror writers, scholars and fanatics. Touching on topics ranging from the monster within, to family values and reclaiming our bodies through horror, this is a deeply personal collection. Every contribution is meticulously crafted and edited, with care and insight into the film and genre being discussed.
![](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5fe76a518d20536a3fbd7246/1611502567968-RC1SGJJZ0F5RFG70FR4Q/WHITE%2BLINE.jpg)
EXPLORE
If you know me at all, you know that I love, as many people do, the work of Nic Cage. Live by the Cage, die by the Cage. So, when the opportunity to review this came up, I jumped at it.
When V/H/S first hit our screens in 2012, nobody could have foreseen that 11 years later we’d be on our sixth instalment (excluding the two spinoffs) of the series.
When someone is in a toxic relationship, it can affect more than just their heart and mind. Their bodies can weaken or change due to the continued stress and unhappiness that comes from the toxicity.
If you can’t count on your best friend to check your teeth and hands and stand vigil with you all night to make sure you don’t wolf out, who can you count on? And so begins our story on anything but an ordinary night in 1993…
The best thing about urban legends is the delicious thrill of the forbidden. Don’t say “Bloody Mary” in the mirror three times in a dark room unless you’re brave enough to summon her. Don’t flash your headlights at a car unless you want to have them drive you to your death.
A Wounded Fawn (Travis Stevens, 2022) celebrates both art history and female rage in this surreal take on the slasher genre.
Perpetrator opens with a girl walking alone in the dark. Her hair is long and loose just begging to be yanked back and her bright clothes—a blood red coat, in fact—is a literal matador’s cape for anything that lies beyond the beam of her phone screen.
Filmed on location in Scotland, Ryan Hendrick's new thriller Mercy Falls (2023) uses soaring views of the Scottish Highlands to show that the natural world can either provide shelter or be used as a demented playground for people to hurt each other.
I can sometimes go months without having a panic attack. Unfortunately, this means that when they do happen, they often feel like they come out of nowhere. They can come on so fast and hard it’s like being hit by a bus, my breath escapes my body, and I can’t get it back.