(Goodreads)
Aging, self-absorbed rock star Judas Coyne has a thing for the macabre -- his collection includes sketches from infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy, a trepanned skull from the 16th century, a used hangman's noose, Aleister Crowley's childhood chessboard, etc. -- so when his assistant tells him about a ghost for sale on an online auction site, he immediately puts in a bid and purchases it.
The black, heart-shaped box that Coyne receives in the mail not only contains the suit of a dead man but also his vengeance-obsessed spirit. The ghost, it turns out, is the stepfather of a young groupie who committed suicide after the 54-year-old Coyne callously used her up and threw her away. Now, determined to kill Coyne and anyone who aids him, the merciless ghost of Craddock McDermott begins his assault on the rocker's sanity.
I think this might be the first horror novel I've ever read. Sure I've read Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (honestly the images impacted me more as a child than the actual stories) and read my fair share of creepypasta (Squidward's Suicide messed me up!) but never anything that I couldn't finish in a day or less. Let me preface my review by saying that I am a scaredy cat (yes, that's the official term for it) who loves watching scary movies and not being able to sleep for weeks and going to Hollywood Horror Nights and burying my face in my friend's shoulder throughout the night.
With that said, Heart-Shaped Box only left me feeling scared for the first night after I began reading it. However, I'm sure living in a 50 year old church doesn't help! I wouldn't exactly categorize Heart-Shaped Box as a horror novel; the long journey that Judas and Mary Beth (aka Georgia) go on falls more towards the thriller category and there's really nothing that's going to keep the average person up at night.
Heart-Shaped Box is divided into four sections, Black Dog, Ride On., Hurt, and Alive. It wasn't easy to feel a connection with Judas, the novel's middle aged protagonist, at least not until half way through the novel. Although he's a famous death metal rockstar, he came across as fake with the way he would talk about what was expected of him (the black clothing, the ankhs, the gory lyrics) and his fans. Maybe he was just tired, maybe he was just getting old. It just didn't come across as genuine and that definitely made it hard to connect with him.
Part of what made me root for him was his 20-something year old girlfriend, Mary Beth. I appreciated her voice and that she was more than what her Goth exterior had initially led on. Had it not been for her, I don't think I would have cared as much if Judas came out dead or alive. Something memorable about Joe Hill's writing was how he wrote the surrealistic scenes when Judas dealt with the dead. They were very vivid and well written, definitely memorable.
No comments:
Post a Comment