Jade Daniels is a half-Blackfeet teenage girl who's obsessed with slasher movies. She goes to sleep with them playing, she plays slasher-centric pranks in school which do nothing to endear her to the administration, she writes term papers on them for her history class (we get to read a bunch of these and they're both hilarious and very plausibly written by a bright teenager), and when weird events start happening in town, she's convinced that it will all unfold according to the slasher movie beat sheet... and she can't wait to see it happen.
Jade lives with her awful alcoholic father, probably isn't going to graduate from high school, and works a depressing job as a janitor with a guy who sexually harasses her, so you can see why she'd like to see it all explode in a shower of gore.
This book works as a slasher novel in book form. It's also a really interesting example of an unreliable narrator, as Jade is an obsessive teenager who sees everything according to her own preconceived ideas... which isn't to say that she's always wrong. She's a memorable, unusual character and I love her so much. There's also a lot of fascinating metafictional stuff going on, and an unexpectedly moving story. And despite a lot of dark stuff going on, Jade is often hilarious and so is the book.
My Heart is a Chainsaw is, maybe appropriately, a much messier book than The Only Good Indians, and is in a horror subgenre that I don't like as much. But I think if you like the latter, you'd like the former, and vice versa.
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sholio's excellent review.
After you finish the book, read the acknowledgments. They're actually a lovely short essay on how Jones came to write the book, his feelings about horror, and the people who helped him along his way.
Content notes: Very gory, gruesome, and gross. Jade attempts suicide in chapter one. (She's in a better frame of mind for the rest of the book). Sexual harassment, sexual abuse, domestic violence.
Jade lives with her awful alcoholic father, probably isn't going to graduate from high school, and works a depressing job as a janitor with a guy who sexually harasses her, so you can see why she'd like to see it all explode in a shower of gore.
This book works as a slasher novel in book form. It's also a really interesting example of an unreliable narrator, as Jade is an obsessive teenager who sees everything according to her own preconceived ideas... which isn't to say that she's always wrong. She's a memorable, unusual character and I love her so much. There's also a lot of fascinating metafictional stuff going on, and an unexpectedly moving story. And despite a lot of dark stuff going on, Jade is often hilarious and so is the book.
My Heart is a Chainsaw is, maybe appropriately, a much messier book than The Only Good Indians, and is in a horror subgenre that I don't like as much. But I think if you like the latter, you'd like the former, and vice versa.
If you have already read this, please join the spoilery discussion going on in the comments of
sholio's excellent review. After you finish the book, read the acknowledgments. They're actually a lovely short essay on how Jones came to write the book, his feelings about horror, and the people who helped him along his way.
Content notes: Very gory, gruesome, and gross. Jade attempts suicide in chapter one. (She's in a better frame of mind for the rest of the book). Sexual harassment, sexual abuse, domestic violence.
