Book Review: “My Heart is a Chainsaw” by Stephen Graham Jones

My Heart is a Chainsaw | Stephen Graham Jones

This book will be published Aug 31 by Gallery/Saga Press

This year, the Stoker Award for "Superior Achievement in a Novel" went to Stephen Graham Jones's The Only Good Indians, which is one of the least surprising Stoker wins of recent memory. This was a book that, as a horror fan, you couldn't stop hearing about for the past two years. 

Enter: My Heart is a Chainsaw, the unenviable follow-up to The Only Good Indians. 

This book succeeds on many levels.

Slasher story with a sympathetic protagonist? check

Clever manipulation of slasher tropes? check

Cons of slasher film trivia embedded into plot? check

Unfortunately, some of those very things that make this book unique and fun end up slowing down the narrative. There are long passages of stream-of-consciousness style writing that (while witty,) do give the story a slightly disjointed effect. The entire book is written in this style. There is the conundrum. Can a book be too clever? Normally I'd disagree. But...maybe?

My prediction is that My Heart is a Chainsaw shows up on all of the horror literature ballots next year. And it probably deserves to be. This is a homerun swing of a horror novel, that was burdened by a small margin of error. For the right reader (slasher fans that are patient readers?), this is your favorite book. For me? It was ok.

Grade: C

Review by Jason Cavallaro

I was sent a digital copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for a review.