I finished reading My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones earlier this week. While I didn’t love it, I liked it enough that I drove to the bookstore the day after I finished it to pick up the sequel.
The book connected with all of the horror movie watching I have been doing lately, especially the main character who is obsessed with slasher films. I appreciated how layered the story was, without seeming forced.
It is a gruesome potboiler but it is also a meditation on whether we have to live in the world we are given or if we can change and create it as we need or want to. And it is about what white people have done to Native people, and it is about life in a small town, and it is about domestic trauma and sexual abuse.
My only complaint is that it is a lot of time—basically the entire length of the novel—to spend with a single character. There are also parts of the book (especially during the climax) that I felt could have done with some trimming.
Overall, though, this book is a good chunk of contemporary horror with a compelling main character, a story that will keep surprising you, and a ton of Easter eggs for slasher fans.