My Heart Is a Chainsaw

Last updated
My Heart Is a Chainsaw
My Heart is a Chainsaw.jpg
First edition (UK)
Author Stephen Graham Jones
Audio read byCara Gee
LanguageEnglish
SeriesThe Indian Lake Trilogy
GenreHorror
Publisher Saga Press (US)
Titan Books (UK)
Publication date
2021
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint, ebook, audiobook
Pages416 pages
ISBN 1982137630 First edition hardback
Followed by Don't Fear the Reaper  

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a 2021 horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones and the first book in The Indian Lake Trilogy. The book is the winner of the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. It received critical praise for its references to, and deconstruction of, the slasher film genre.

Contents

Plot

Two Dutch tourists are murdered at Indian Lake near the small town of Proofrock, Idaho. Their phone remains in the town canoe, unnoticed. Indian Lake is an artificial reservoir; the remains of a Christian church and other town buildings lie beneath its surface. Local legend tells the story of Stacey Graves, a young Indian girl who was accused of being a witch. Stacey cannot enter the waters of the lake because it is a Christian burial ground. Indian Lake abuts a national forest, which is being developed into a new neighborhood called Terra Nova by a group of wealthy businesspeople.

High school senior Jennifer “Jade” Daniels has been abandoned by her mother and lives with her alcoholic father. She is obsessed with slasher films. Jade attempts suicide by cutting her wrist and jumping into the town canoe, imagining herself as Alice at the end of Friday the 13th . She is rescued by Sheriff Hardy. Hardy returns her effects along with the Dutch tourists’ phone, assuming it to be Jade’s.

Jade watches the phone’s video and becomes convinced that a slasher is stalking the town. She suspects the slasher will be dressed as Stacey Graves, the Lake Witch. Jade fixates on her classmate Letha Mondragon. Letha’s father Theo is one of the wealthiest men in Terra Nova. Jade believes Letha will play the role of “final girl” and attempts to tell Letha about her theories. Letha believes that Jade is having a mental health crisis and reports the incident to Sheriff Hardy. Jade tries to convince everyone that the killer will strike on Saturday during the town’s Independence Day party, but no one believes her.

Jade runs away from home; she is tackled and arrested by Hardy. He decides to hold her for 48 hours, which will cause her to miss the Independence Day celebration. Mr. Holmes, Jade’s favorite teacher, is injured when his ultralight plane crashes into Indian Lake. During the commotion, Jade escapes from the jail. Jade explores the Terra Nova construction site and finds the body of a construction worker; she sees a figure pulling more bodies into the forest. Jade suspects that Theo Mondragon shot down Mr. Holmes’s plane and killed the construction workers, who were witnesses. She attempts to report the crimes to Hardy’s office, but the receptionist thinks she is lying.

Letha invites Jade to stay on her yacht for a night of horror movies. The next morning, they are awoken to find that many of the other passengers have been brutally murdered. Letha and Jade escape the yacht and are pursued, presumably by Theo. They find the construction workers’ corpses hidden in a pile of elk carcasses, which they use as a shelter to hide from the killer.

The next day, July 4th, Letha digs them out of the mound of carcasses. Letha and Jade sail across Indian Lake to Proofrock, where townspeople are sitting in their boats watching Jaws . Chaos breaks out as an unseen assailant begins murdering people. Mr. Holmes suffers a serious head injury. Before he dies, Jade admits to him that her father had raped her. Letha attacks Jade’s father, who falls into the lake. Letha is then attacked by the ghost of Stacey Graves. Stacey rampages through the crowd, injuring Hardy, and killing Theo and dozens of other residents. Jade pulls Stacey beneath the surface of the lake; Stacey is dragged downwards by ghostly hands. Jade lies down in the town canoe, once again echoing the end of Friday the Thirteenth. She expects Stacey to attack again, just like Jason Voorhees. When someone grabs the canoe, Jade stabs out and realizes that she has killed her father, who had been trying to climb to safety. Jade realizes that she has been caught on camera killing her father, and hypothesizes that her life is over.

A fire breaks out in the national forest. Jade adjusts the settings of the dam to raise the water level and save the town. Wildlife flee from the fire. She watches a mother bear protect its cub from a male bear, relieved to see that some mother animals protect their young.

Release

My Heart Is a Chainsaw was first published in the United States on August 31, 2021, in hardback and ebook formats through Gallery/Saga Press. [1] [2] An audiobook, narrated by Cara Gee, was released simultaneously through Simon & Schuster Audio. [3] A paperback edition of the book was released on March 29, 2022. [4]

Major themes

According to a review for the Los Angeles Times , Jade's obsession with slasher movies is rooted in revenge and the idea of justice. Reviewer Noah Berlatsky states that killers such as a Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees can be read as metaphors for "the nightmares of an abused child", and that "if you’re a kid, grownups really do seem unfathomably powerful, perhaps unstoppably destructive". Jade explicitly draws a contrast between the slasher subgenre and the rape revenge subgenre. In the latter, the revengers are "often destroyed and debased by their own violence". According to Jade, a movie which "suggests that violence is senseless or that the strong target the weak simply because they can" does not deserve to be called a slasher. [5]

A review for the Los Angeles Review of Books explores how Jade relates to the archetype of a final girl. Reviewer Kali Simmons states that Jade is unable to see herself as a final girl because "her own experiences of abuse, in her mind, preclude her from conforming to the Final Girl image of the pure and virginal maiden". The author notes that Jade chooses to ignore some of the regressive and troubling tropes of the horror genre, and that "Jade, unlike the reader, never manages to consciously comprehend how the [final girl] archetype’s repressive and at times unattainable standards can do more harm than good to young women". According to Simmons, a final girl who is left alone with a monster for too long will begin to take on some of the killer's properties, leading to a bloody confrontation. In this way, Jade undergoes a "devastating transformation". The review concludes that My Heart Is a Chainsaw contains both a "celebration of Finals Girls and a cautionary critique of unwavering fanaticism". [6]

Reception

Critical reception for the book was positive. Kirkus Reviews gave the novel a starred review, writing that it is "a magnum opus that has the power to send readers scrambling for more". [7] Writing for NPR, author Gabino Iglesias called the novel "a deconstruction of slasher films that celebrates everything about them". Iglesias praised the novel for its inclusion of complex themes including "child abuse, alcoholism, discrimination, and gentrification" in addition to the horror elements. [8] A review for The Washington Post praised Jade's characterization, including "[her] awkwardness and insecurities, her intractable obstinacy, her refusal to behave in a socially acceptable manner". The review found her to be a lovable protagonist. [9] Rolling Stone praised My Heart Is a Chainsaw for being "both an homage to this trope and a big old “fuck you” to the concept that only good girls can prevail". [10]

Awards

Related Research Articles

A slasher film is a subgenre of horror films involving a killer or a group of killers stalking and murdering a group of people, usually by use of bladed or sharp tools. Although the term "slasher" may occasionally be used informally as a generic term for any horror film involving murder, film analysts cite an established set of characteristics which set slasher films apart from other horror subgenres, such as monster movies, splatter films, supernatural and psychological horror films.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Final girl</span> Trope in slasher horror films

The final girl is a trope in horror films. It refers to the last girl(s) or woman alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story. The final girl has been observed in many films, including Psycho, Voices of Desire, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Halloween, Alien, Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and Scream. The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her article "Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film" (1987). Clover suggested that in these films, the viewer began by sharing the perspective of the killer, but experienced a shift in identification to the final girl partway through the film.

<i>Bag of Bones</i> 1998 novel by Stephen King

Bag of Bones is a 1998 horror novel by American writer Stephen King. It focuses on an author who suffers severe writer's block and delusions at an isolated lake house four years after the death of his wife. It won the 1999 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, the 1999 British Fantasy Award for Best Novel, and the 1999 Locus Award for Best Dark Fantasy/Horror Novel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tananarive Due</span> American author and educator (born 1966)

Tananarive Priscilla Due is an American author and educator. Due won the American Book Award for her novel The Living Blood (2001), and both the Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel and Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel for her novel The Reformatory (2023). She is also known as a film historian with expertise in Black horror. Due teaches a course at UCLA called "The Sunken Place: Racism, Survival and the Black Horror Aesthetic", which focuses on the Jordan Peele film Get Out.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen Graham Jones</span> Native American fiction author

Stephen Graham Jones is a Blackfeet Native American author of experimental fiction, horror fiction, crime fiction, and science fiction. His works include the horror novels The Only Good Indians, My Heart Is a Chainsaw, and Night of the Mannequins.

<i>The Texas Chainsaw Massacre</i> (2003 film) 2003 slasher film directed by Marcus Nispel

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is a 2003 American slasher film directed by Marcus Nispel, written by Scott Kosar, and starring Jessica Biel, Jonathan Tucker, Erica Leerhsen, Mike Vogel, Eric Balfour, and R. Lee Ermey. Its plot follows a group of young adults traveling through rural Texas who encounter Leatherface and his murderous family. It is a remake of Tobe Hooper's 1974 film The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the fifth installment in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise. Several crew members of the original film were involved with the project: Hooper and writer Kim Henkel served as co-producers, Daniel Pearl returned as cinematographer, and John Larroquette reprised his voice narration for the opening intertitles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yvonne Navarro</span> American author (born 1957)

Yvonne Navarro is an American author who has published over twenty novels. Of those twenty, the titles AfterAge, deadrush, Final Impact, Red Shadows, DeadTimes, That's Not My Name and Mirror Me were solo novels, or fiction created solely by her. Her most recent works Highborn and Concrete Savior are also solo novels and are part of The Dark Redemption Series. She lives in Sierra Vista, Arizona and was married to author Weston Ochse.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joe Hill (writer)</span> American writer (born 1972)

Joseph Hillström King, better known by the pen name Joe Hill, is an American writer. His work includes the novels Heart-Shaped Box (2007), Horns (2010), NOS4A2 (2013), and The Fireman (2016); the short story collections 20th Century Ghosts (2005) and Strange Weather (2017); and the comic book series Locke & Key (2008–2013). He has won awards including Bram Stoker Awards, British Fantasy Awards, and an Eisner Award.

Alice (<i>Friday the 13th</i>) Main character in the Friday the 13th series

Alice Hardy is a fictional character in the Friday the 13th franchise. Alice first appears in Friday the 13th (1980) as an artist working as a camp counselor. She is portrayed by Adrienne King—who reprises the role in the sequel Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981) and the fan film Jason Rising (2021). Alice's creator, Victor Miller, scripted her as a flawed character, envisioning her in an affair. Once production began on the original film, budgetary constraints limited the deeper exposition intended for Alice's character.

Tamara Thorne, who also writes under the pen name Chris Curry, is a well-known, bestselling American horror writer. Her novel Winter Scream, co-authored with L. Dean James, was nominated for the 1991 Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel. She has authored nearly 20 novels, including two novel series, multiple anthologies and several stand-alone works. They tend to be set in the Los Angeles area, where she has lived since she was born.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bailee Madison</span> American and Canadian actress and singer (born 1999)

Bailee Madison Riley is an American and Canadian actress, singer and songwriter. Born in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Madison began acting at just two weeks of age, appearing mostly in television commercials for the first few years. Her film debut, as May Belle Aarons in the fantasy drama Bridge to Terabithia (2007), brought her early praise. She gained wider acclaim for starring in the war drama film Brothers (2009), for which she was nominated for the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Young Performer. Madison went on to star in a number of horror and thriller films, beginning with Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010), gaining a reputation as a scream queen. She had commercial success with starring roles in the comedies Just Go with It (2011) and Parental Guidance (2012), though the critical reception of these films was mostly negative.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Thomas (author)</span> American author (born 1967)

Richard Thomas is an American author. His focus is on neo-noir, new weird, and speculative fiction, typically including elements of violence, mental instability, breaks in reality, unreliable narrators, and tragedies. His work is rich in setting and sensory details—often called maximalism. His writing has also been called transgressive and grotesque. In recent years, his dark fiction has added more hope, leaning into hopepunk. He was Editor-in-Chief at both Dark House Press (2012-2016) and Gamut Magazine (2017-2019).

<i>Hemlock Grove</i> 2012 American horror-thriller novel

Hemlock Grove is a 2012 horror-thriller debut novel by American author Brian McGreevy. The book was released on March 27, 2012 through Farrar, Straus and Giroux and is set in the fictional town of Hemlock Grove, Pennsylvania. A graphic novel tie-in and a television series based on the events in the book have been produced.

Joshua "Josh" Viola is a science fiction/fantasy/horror writer, artist and film producer best known for Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver – The Dead Shall Rise, True Believers, Denver Moon, The Bane of Yoto and his companies Hex Publishers and Bit Bot Media. He is a 2021 Splatterpunk Award nominee and a 2022 Colorado Book Awards winner.

<i>Clown in a Cornfield</i> 2020 novel by Adam Cesare

Clown in a Cornfield is a 2020 horror novel by American author Adam Cesare and marks his first novel in the young adult genre.

<i>The Only Good Indians</i> 2020 horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians is a 2020 horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones. It was first published on July 14, 2020, through Saga Press and Titan Books. This novel follows four members for the Blackfeet Nation as they come to terms with events that happened ten years prior.

<i>The Final Girl Support Group</i> 2021 horror novel by Grady Hendrix

The Final Girl Support Group is a horror-themed mystery novel by American writer Grady Hendrix, published July 13, 2021 by Berkley Books. A television series adaptation has been announced.

<i>Dont Fear the Reaper</i> (novel) 2023 horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones

Don't Fear the Reaper is a 2023 horror novel by American writer Stephen Graham Jones. It is the second novel in the Indian Lake Trilogy, following the 2021 novel My Heart Is a Chainsaw. The book received generally favorable reviews, and was nominated for several awards, including the Locus Award for Best Horror Novel, Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel, and a Shirley Jackson Award.

Night of the Mannequins is a 2020 novella by Stephen Graham Jones. The book was released through Tor.com and was awarded the 2020 Bram Stoker Award for Best Long Fiction and the 2021 Shirley Jackson Award for best novella.

Vince A. Liaguno is a contemporary American horror writer and editor/anthologist, feature magazine writer, and poet.

References

  1. ↑ Jones, Stephen Graham (2021). My heart is a chainsaw. New York. ISBN   978-1-9821-3763-2. OCLC   1201300287.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  2. ↑ Jones, Stephen Graham (2021). My heart is a chainsaw. Titan Books. ISBN   978-1-78909-810-5. OCLC   1243908963.
  3. ↑ My heart Is a chainsaw, 2021, ISBN   978-1-7971-2332-5, OCLC   1311440138 , retrieved 2022-07-02
  4. ↑ Jones, Stephen Graham (2022). My heart is a chainsaw. New York. ISBN   978-1-9821-3763-2. OCLC   1201300287.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ↑ Noah Berlatsky (30 Aug 2021). "Review Stephen Graham Jones' novel: 'My Heart Is a Chainsaw'". Los Angeles Times . Retrieved 2 Nov 2023.
  6. ↑ Kali Simmons (24 Sep 2021). "Final Girls and Fantasies: On Stephen Graham Jones's "My Heart Is a Chainsaw"". Los Angeles Review of Books . Retrieved 2 Nov 2023.
  7. ↑ "My Heart Is a Chainsaw". Kirkus Reviews. 22 Feb 2023. Retrieved 2 Nov 2023.
  8. ↑ Iglesias, Gabino (2021-09-01). "Slasher Films Provide The Lens That Frames This Horror Story". NPR. Retrieved 2022-07-02.
  9. ↑ "Review | Stephen Graham Jones's 'My Heart Is a Chainsaw' will delight horror movie fans". Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 2022-07-02.
  10. ↑ Ehrlich, Brenna (2021-09-09). "Horror Novel 'My Heart Is a Chainsaw' Gives Us a New Kind of Final Girl". Rolling Stone. Retrieved 2022-07-02.
  11. ↑ Pavlik, Tina (2022-05-16). "2021 Bram Stoker Awards® Winners". Horror Writers Association. Retrieved 2022-07-02.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.