In her quickly gentrifying rural lake town Jade sees recent events only her encyclopedic knowledge of horror films could have prepared her for in this latest novel from the Jordan Peele of horror literature, New York Times bestselling author Stephen Graham Jones.
"Some girls just don't know how to die..."
Shirley Jackson meets Friday the 13th in My Heart Is a Chainsaw, written by the author of The Only Good Indians Stephen Graham Jones, called "a literary master" by National Book Award winner Tananarive Due and "one of our most talented living writers" by Tommy Orange.
Alma Katsu calls My Heart Is a Chainsaw "a homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre." On the surface is a story of murder in small-town America. But beneath is its beating heart: a biting critique of American colonialism, Indigenous displacement, and gentrification, and a heartbreaking portrait of a broken young girl who uses horror movies to cope with the horror of her own life.
Jade Daniels is an angry, half-Indian outcast with an abusive father, an absent mother, and an entire town that wants nothing to do with her. She lives in her own world, a world in which protection comes from an unusual source: horror movies... especially the ones where a masked killer seeks revenge on a world that wronged them. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold.
Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges...a portrait of the scared and traumatized little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask: angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves, and desperately wants a home. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph.
"Horror fans [will] be blown away by this audacious extravaganza." - Publishers Weekly
"This extraordinary novel is an essential purchase." - Kirkus
"Stephen's writing is a chainsaw and every sentence in this book drips with blood, every paragraph is clotted with skin, and every period is a bullethole. He makes me feel like an amateur." - Grady Hendrix, New York Times bestselling author of The Final Girl Support Group
"A homage to slasher films that also manages to defy and transcend genre. You don't have to be a slasher fan to read My Heart is a Chainsaw, but I guarantee that you will be after you read it." - Alma Katsu, author of The Deep and The Hunger
"Brutal, beautiful, and unforgettable, My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a visceral ride from start to finish. A bloody love letter to slasher fans, it's everything I never knew I needed in a horror novel." - Gwendolyn Kiste, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rust Maidens
"Stephen Graham Jones can't miss. My Heart Is A Chainsaw is a painful drama about trauma, mental health, and the heartache of yearning to belong...twisted into a DNA helix with encyclopedic Slasher movie obsession and a frantic, gory whodunnit mystery, with an ending both savage and shocking. Don't say I didn't warn you!" - Christopher Golden, New York Times bestselling author of Ararat and Red Hands
"An easy contender for Best of the Year. A love letter to (and an examination of) both the horror genre and the American West, it left me stunned and applauding." - Brian Keene, World Horror Grandmaster Award and two Bram Stoker Award-winning author of The Rising and The Damned Highway
"Stephen Graham Jones masterfully navigates the shadowy paths between mystery and horror. An epic entry in the slasher canon." - Laird Barron, author of Swift to Chase
"An intense homage to the classic horror films of yore." - Polygon
"At once an homage to the horror genre and a searing indictment of the brutal legacy of Indigenous genocide in America, Stephen Graham Jones' My Heart Is a Chainsaw delivers both dazzling thrills and visceral commentary... Jones takes grief, gentrification and abuse to task in a tale that will terrify you and break your heart all at the same time." - Time
"Sneaking in right at the end of the summer is the best horror novel of the year... A loving homage to meta-horror classics like Scream and Cabin in the Woods. Hilarious at one turn and outrageously gruesome at the next, it'll be the perfect book to read after dark over Labor Day weekend." - GQ
"Stephen Graham Jones continues his reign as a horror maestro with My Heart Is a Chainsaw. This brutal homage to slasher films focuses on Jade, a young half-Indian woman who finds comfort in horror movies after feeling abandoned by her family and her town." - PopSugar
"Stephen Graham Jones is a star when it comes to melding horror with literary fiction, exploring themes of colonialism and racisms alongside Indigenous experiences. He hasn't been described as the Jordan Peele of horror fiction for nothing... A masterpiece." - Book Riot
