My Heart is A Chainsaw analysis and review

My Heart is A Chainsaw is a love letter to slasher horror films from highly prolific author, Stephen Graham Jones. Chainsaw follows Jade Daniels, a 17 year-old social outcast who is obsessed with slasher films. Obsessed may not even be a strong enough word as they consume her entire daily life. Every convo she has she relates back to a slasher film at some point throughout the novel, regardless if the reference make sense to make or not. Jade has no friends, as her fervent passion for slasher films is equally exhausting to others as it is off-putting. Jade struggles in school, has an alcoholic for a father, and a mother who isn’t in the picture, which all contribute to her unhappy life.

The novel takes place in Proofrock, Idaho as bizarre deaths begin to take place. Jade becomes convinced that she and the rest of the town are living out the start of a slasher film and that she needs to act to stop it. Jade is a highly unreliable narrator, so it’s unclear whether she is correct, or if she is experiencing symptoms of the onset of schizophrenia, or if she is simply a lonely girl who is projecting the one joyful aspect of her life onto normal occurrences to give her life meaning. The novel is largely ambiguous on this, giving evidence for all three but leaving the reader in the dark to the truth.

The novel starts really well as it establishes Jade as a girl just as unhinged and bizarre as she is lonely and emotionally damaged. Jones does a great job of making Jade a complicated character; one that we can feel equal parts sympathy for her shitty upbringing and difficult home life as we can disdain for her unsettling and bizarre persona. Jones paints a teen girl who through poverty, negligence, and absentee parents has difficulty making meaningful connections with others. However, she does herself no favors by self-sabotaging any chance of normalcy by intentionally alienating herself from others through her routine disturbing behavior.

Jade is largely an unlikable character. She unfortunately is void of many, if any, positive qualities. This makes it difficult to become invested into Jade and the story because she’s so distasteful. I found myself wanting her to be wrong about the murders simply because of how unlikable she is. The slasher references that Jade incessantly makes wears thin pretty early on but they never let up in the novel. Jones lays it on heavy throughout. It would work better if it were just the dialogue, but also included as a story within a story, are extra credit assignments that Jade is giving to her English professor, Mr. Holmes. She pontificates vapidly on slashers in these assignments, not really making a point and just rambling. I know this is supposed to show her blind obsession but for the reader, it becomes grating to be inundated with the vast many that Jones includes. By the end, I was forcing myself to push through them.

Jones’s writing decisions weigh the novel down. There are critical junctures of the novel where a significant event will take place and Jones will run through it as if it were small talk. Important sequences in the plot are not given the attention that they deserve to properly explain the narrative. There were several moments in which I would zip past an important moment and I would have to circle back and reread to ensure that I’m following. This makes the book anti-climatic because the few action sequences are glossed over. This is an odd decision by Jones as he intentionally cuts the legs out from under his own novel.

Jones has become famous for his highly conversational prose, but admittedly it’s not for everyone. This wasn’t a problem for me in The Only Good Indians or Night of the Mannequin and it isn’t in Chainsaw, either. The dialogue is very conversational and informal and reads as if you are listening to people talk in real life. If highly unconventional syntax isn’t your cup of tea then Mr. Stephen Graham probably isn’t for you.

The novel starts strongly within the first 100 pages but it lulls for about 200 pages after you get the gist of what is going on. Much of the action is passive, so this coupled with Jones’s tendency to avoid detailing action makes the novel feel hollow.

It takes a while to get there but the novel does eventually kick into gear and we get horror sequences. There’s a shit ton of stuff going on once when we reach this point. The plot is pretty confounded but it makes sense from Jade’s POV and explains her confusion throughout the novel. The action at this point is nice but I’m not sure if it is worth the overextended buildup.

Whatever solid climax we get is completely devastated by the awful ending. The novel ends very abruptly and without full explanation or closure. It felt as if Jones wrote himself into a corner and didn’t know how to get out so he pressed the easy button. The ending doesn’t really feel like an ending. For a novel that is bloated in its middle section, not to provide a satisfying conclusion is extraordinarily frustrating. The novel felt as if it were too long but when it needed to be fleshed out, Jones ended it.

My Heart is a Chainsaw is a letdown. Horror film lovers will appreciate the slasher references but they ultimately become incessant and overwhelming to continuously read. Jade is a difficult character to connect with let alone root for. She’s not only unlikable but is also uncompelling and difficult to follow through the novel because she’s simply uninteresting.

As I’ve mentioned, the slasher references become groan-inducing but that’s really all that Jade has to offer. Her obsession with slashers and her manic and flippant attitude on the deaths make her an annoying main character. Jade as a lead is like if Scream were told from Randy’s point-of-view.

Lastly, Graham Jones’s writing isn’t up to snuff here, either. He fails to adequately detail major points. He glosses over important action sequences leaving the reader lost attempting to follow pivotal moments. The plot doesn’t have much onscreen action and ironically isn’t very horror for the majority of the novel. This could be intentional, and if it were, is clever irony but it doesn’t make for a better novel.

Jones is obviously passionate about horror and Chainsaw is an ambitious love letter towards the genre that unfortunately falls very flat. Of the three works that I have read by Jones (The Only Good Indians and Night of the Mannequin) thus far, Chainsaw is a distant third. The plot moves at a snail’s pace, the final reveal is anticlimactic, and the multiple antagonists felt hyper-contrived. Last, Jade is a bad main character. Not because she’s a “bad” person; she’s not. She lacks the allure of a main character to make you invested into the novel. A below average main character, a slow plot, questionable writing decisions, and a lackluster ending make for a novel that I believe is a miss.

------4.3/10