Confession: I’m a voracious reader, but I read more romance than horror. Maybe because I like a happy ending after investing 6-12 hours in a story. Or maybe if I’m really honest it’s because the images I conjure up in my own mind for novels stick with me more vividly than films, so nighttime horror reading turns into a lot of staring at the ceiling waiting for Death in its various forms to find me.
Despite sacrificing some sleep, these days I am making a conscious effort to read more horror, and Stephen Graham Jones might be the reason why. Everyone was talking about Jones’ The Only Good Indians (2020) the year it came out. Remember, this was during the early months of the pandemic when we were all stuck in our houses and looking for something to fear besides contracting COVID-19. I bought the book on a whim and devoured it. “Oh, that was fun,” I thought. “I’ll do that again sometime.” So I dabbled in other genre novels that year, particularly enjoying Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Mexican Gothic, Naomi Alderman’s The Power, and Lucy Foley’s The Guest List. But the first horror novel I waited for, marking it on my calendar and counting down the days until its release, was Jones’ next release after Indians, which was My Heart is a Chainsaw (2021).
So this review is a reread review. The reread was in honor of the newly released Don’t Fear The Reaper (released March 2023), the slasher sequel we lucky fans didn’t even know we were getting when Chainsaw came out. I wanted to revisit Jade and Proofrock, Idaho and remind myself just how much I loved this novel when I read it in 2021. It did not disappoint.
The book starts strong with a teaser of two Dutch tourists brutally and mysteriously murdered in Indian Lake at the heart of the town of Proofrock. Side note: during the pandemic I got a kayak. I went on ZERO night paddles for a year after reading this book.
The setup gets us ready to meet our lead and (possible Final Girl), Jade Daniels. The book properly opens on Friday the 13th, when the latest in a series of unfortunate events in an unfortunate life cause slasher-obsessed Jade to hijack the town canoe and slit her wrists. Her suicide attempt gets her 8 weeks of in-patient treatment. When she returns, her world is changed forever by two things: 1) the appearance of Final Girl Incarnate Letha Mondragon, who is as as sexy and badass as she is pure), and 2) Jade’s discovery of a video from the canoe of two Dutch blood sacrifices in her own hometown! These events can only herald the start of a slasher cycle right in Proofrock.
Jones, who is Blackfoot Native American, masterfully weaves Jade’s obsession with horror into a much darker depiction of half-Native Jade’s neglect and abuse at the hands of her family, and also by her larger community. I don’t want to give major spoilers here – because again, I see books as a bigger investment than movies – but Jade becomes a fantastically unreliable narrator and it’s a head trip to figure out what’s real (light spoiler: more than you think) and what’s fantasy (light spoiler: less than you think) as she navigates high school, work, and trying to train Letha for the carnage that’s headed their way while also not getting in the way of too much mayhem, which she is happy to see befall her little town. Sometimes.
In addition to being a love letter to the slasher genre and to horror, Chainsaw is a surprisingly profound meditation on destiny versus self-determination, and what it means to survive.
The story is queer-lite, but Jade’s admiration/infatuation with Letha will be familiar to many baby gays, and their relationship eventually comes to hint at something more as Jade grows into her own power. More to come in Don’t Fear the Reaper I’m sure. I have put off reading the sequel until I finished this review, so I’m officially diving in tonight and I can’t wait!
If you’re looking for a horror novel heavy on blood and angst, give this series a go.
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By Tiffany Albright
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Stay spooky!
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