[Book Review] My Heart Is a Chainsaw (2021)

Stephen Graham Jones made a big splash last year when his award-winning novel The Only Good Indians hit shelves. On August 31, he returns to answer the question on everyone’s minds: How do you follow that?

His reply is the slasher lore-filled novel My Heart Is a Chainsaw; like Scream if Scream were actually about being an Indigenous teenage girl watching modern-day colonization insidiously take over her hometown as she copes with her outsider status and beer-guzzling father. 

Yes, there is a lot going on.

The new novel follows Jade, a Blackfeet teen living in the lake town of Proofrock, Idaho, surrounded by forest park lands. When a small group of rich settlers begin carving out trees across Indian Lake to make way for their mansion-sized homes (aptly naming their community Terra Nova), Jade becomes obsessed with the Final Girl qualities of newcomer Letha Mondragon. As a body count begins to mount with suspicion cast all around, she becomes all the more convinced that the town of Proofrock is barreling toward a slasher-ific finale that only Letha can stop. 

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is interwoven with Jade’s well-researched slasher knowledge, alternating chapters between story and Slasher 101. Within the narrative itself, Jade’s internal monologue can hardly keep from referencing both well-known and obscure, often forgotten, horror films, her relentlessly singular focus making her excitement at living through a real-life slasher palpable. 

But underneath Jade’s obsession with fiction, there are much darker truths.

No one can tell a story as sad as it is bloody like Jones, who somehow manages to make readers feel the entire gamut of emotion whether he’s writing a novel or novella. Jade is a convincing teenage protagonist with a fully realized voice; darkly funny, sometimes nihilistic, tragic and enduring. 

Jones shines in the act of pushing and pulling readers, giving plenty of fodder for theories as to the source of the gruesome killings in Proofrock. The references to A Bay of Blood are well-earned; anyone and everyone could be culpable. 

My Heart Is a Chainsaw is an exciting, unforgettable entry into the horror novel canon, begging for adaptation to the screen. A book that is ultimately so much bigger than the sum of its parts, it will keep readers guessing up until the last minute, with a finale that lingers for days. 

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