I don’t read a lot of horror. Nor do I watch many horror movies. I don’t like to be scared. About the only way I will go to a horror movie is if a hot girl is willing to go with me, hold my hand while I freak out, and promise not to laugh at me. I have a vague recollection of reading something horror-ish in the past, but for the life of me I can’t remember what it was. So I doubt there will be another book in this category for a while. Then again, I was able to read this book without nightmares, so perhaps horror in written form doesn’t cause as much issue as it used to. It’ll be a bit before we know.
Heart-Shaped Box is the debut novel from Joe Hill, who has apparently written a number of short stories. It’s got a fair amount of publicity behind it. My advanced readers copy lists a high count of promotional efforts. It also mentions that the film rights have already been sold. That doesn’t always mean a movie will be made, but I suspect it will. It seems to me that Hill was writing a lot of it by picturing the scenes.
Judas Coyne is an aging rock star who has a following among metal and goth crowds. In his later years he’s taken to dating young messed-up girls from the south who he calls by the state from which they hail. His current squeeze is Georgia. She stripped at a club in New York City that he visited while doing a Howard Stern appearance. Only shortly after he sent Florida home to her big sister and father when he couldn’t handle her mental illness.
The horror portion is when he acquires a ghost, transported in an old man’s suit packed in a heart-shaped box. The ghost is Florida’s step-father, ostensibly exacting revenge for Coyne’s callous discarding of Florida. The gig works this way: the ghost talks to people, and his voice hypnotically can get them to do whatever he wants. There’s all sorts of visions and supernatural effects as well, but they set the mood. The only way the ghost really has effect is to convince people to do his bidding. And he wants to kill Judas Coyne. Not only that, he wants Coyne to kill Georgia before offing himself. But he’ll make do with convincing other people to kill Coyne if he can. For instance, Judas comes to in his car in the garage with the motor running nearly dead from asphyxiation, entranced in a ghost vision.
Judas and Georgia fight back, then set off on a road trip to Florida’s house in Florida to force the secret of how to defeat the ghost from Florida’s older sister. The ghost gives chase.
Thing is, I wasn’t ever really scared. It was decently long at 376 pages, so I didn’t expect the main character to bite it in the first 100 pages. I won’t reveal whether it really does have a happy ending, but I’ll throw a bit of a spoiler in to say that Judas survives the first couple of ghost offing attempts. You have to read a bit in before things get hairy.
Another spoiler note is that pretty much every character is a survivor of child abuse in some way. Coyne’s father beat on him and his mother, and consequently he’s refused to see his father for 30 years since he made it big as a rock star. He pays for his father’s care (dad is elderly and suffering the after-effects of strokes) but doesn’t visit or talk to him. If child abuse squicks you, don’t read this book.
Joe Hill starts the action off pretty quickly. Rather than build up affinity for Judas Coyne and then unleash the ghost, his method is rather to get the readers to identify with Coyne as the story progresses. There’s a few flashbacks and interludes of non-ghostiness throughout the story where we get to know Judas and Georgia. A couple of bad reviews I’ve read noted that the reviewer didn’t care much for the characters. I did, but it didn’t come until later. I think Hill’s tactic of getting things started fast contributed to that.
One nit that did bother me though. Hill has Coyne describing the goth girls he dates as wanting to be hard
and that’s why they start with the tattoos and piercings and whatnot. My experience is that wanting to be battle-tested is not a characteristic of goth girls. They tend to fall into the you should validate me for the beautiful and unique snowflake I am
camp. So I suspect Hill hasn’t really spent much time in the company of real goth girls. But then, it wasn’t that difficult to substitute metal
for goth
in those scenes and that made it work for me. (Then again, I don’t spend much time with metal girls, so perhaps they are just as snow-flakey as goths.)
Anyway, I thought it was a decent book. Not particularly amazing, but good enough for me to pick up the next Joe Hill novel at some point (after it’s written that is).
Title: Heart-shaped box
Author: Joe Hill (Joseph Hillstrom King)
Imprint / Publisher: William Morrow / HarperCollins
Format: Advanced readers copy
Publication date: February 2007 (hardcover)
Length: 376 p.
ISBN-10: 0-06-124143-1
ISBN-10: 0-06-114793-1 (hardcover)
ISBN-13: 978-0-06-114793-7 (hardcover)
LC classification: PS3608.I4342 H43 2007
