My Heart Is a Chainsaw is a 2021 horror novel by Stephen Graham Jones and the first book in The Indian Lake Trilogy. The book is the winner of the 2021 Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. It received critical praise for its references to, and deconstruction of, the slasher film genre.
Plot
Two Dutch tourists are murdered at Indian Lake near the small town of Proofrock, Idaho. Their phone remains in the town canoe, unnoticed. Indian Lake is an artificial reservoir; the remains of a Christian church and other town buildings lie beneath its surface. Local legend tells the story of Stacey Graves, a young Indian girl who was accused of being a witch. Stacey cannot enter the waters of the lake because it is a Christian burial ground. Indian Lake abuts a national forest, which is being developed into a new neighborhood called Terra Nova by a group of wealthy businesspeople.
High school senior Jennifer “Jade” Daniels has been abandoned by her mother and lives with her alcoholic father. She is obsessed with slasher films. Jade attempts suicide by cutting her wrist and jumping into the town canoe, imagining herself as Alice at the end of Friday the 13th. She is rescued by Sheriff Hardy. Hardy returns her effects along with the Dutch tourists’ phone, assuming it to be Jade’s.
Jade watches the phone’s video and becomes convinced that a slasher is stalking the town. She suspects the slasher will be dressed as Stacey Graves, the Lake Witch. Jade fixates on her classmate Letha Mondragon. Letha’s father Theo is one of the wealthiest men in Terra Nova. Jade believes Letha will play the role of “final girl” and attempts to tell Letha about her theories. Letha believes that Jade is having a mental health crisis and reports the incident to Sheriff Hardy. Jade tries to convince everyone that the killer will strike on Saturday during the town’s Independence Day party, but no one believes her.
Jade runs away from home; she is tackled and arrested by Hardy. He decides to hold her for 48 hours, which will cause her to miss the Independence Day celebration. Mr. Holmes, Jade’s favorite teacher, is injured when his ultralight plane crashes into Indian Lake. During the commotion, Jade escapes from the jail. Jade explores the Terra Nova construction site and finds the body of a construction worker; she sees a figure pulling more bodies into the forest. Jade suspects that Theo Mondragon shot down Mr. Holmes’s plane and killed the construction workers, who were witnesses. She attempts to report the crimes to Hardy’s office, but the receptionist thinks she is lying.
Letha invites Jade to stay on her yacht for a night of horror movies. The next morning, they are awoken to find that many of the other passengers have been brutally murdered. Letha and Jade escape the yacht and are pursued, presumably by Theo. They find the construction workers’ corpses hidden in a pile of elk carcasses, which they use as a shelter to hide from the killer.
The next day, July 4th, Letha digs them out of the mound of carcasses. Letha and Jade sail across Indian Lake to Proofrock, where townspeople are sitting in their boats watching Jaws. Chaos breaks out as an unseen assailant begins murdering people. Mr. Holmes suffers a serious head injury. Before he dies, Jade admits to him that her father had raped her. Letha attacks Jade’s father, who falls into the lake. Letha is then attacked by the ghost of Stacey Graves. Stacey rampages through the crowd, injuring Hardy, and killing Theo and dozens of other residents. Jade pulls Stacey beneath the surface of the lake; Stacey is dragged downwards by ghostly hands. Jade lies down in the town canoe, once again echoing the end of Friday the Thirteenth. She expects Stacey to attack again, just like Jason Voorhees. When someone grabs the canoe, Jade stabs out and realizes that she has killed her father, who had been trying to climb to safety. Jade realizes that she has been caught on camera killing her father, and hypothesizes that her life is over.
A fire breaks out in the national forest. Jade adjusts the settings of the dam to raise the water level and save the town. Wildlife flee from the fire. She watches a mother bear protect its cub from a male bear, relieved to see that some mother animals protect their young.
Release
My Heart Is a Chainsaw was first published in the United States on August 31, 2021, in hardback and ebook formats through Gallery/Saga Press.[1][2] An audiobook, narrated by Cara Gee, was released simultaneously through Simon & Schuster Audio.[3] A paperback edition of the book was released on March 29, 2022.[4]
Major themes
According to a review for the Los Angeles Times, Jade's obsession with slasher movies is rooted in revenge and the idea of justice. Reviewer Noah Berlatsky states that killers such as a Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees can be read as metaphors for "the nightmares of an abused child", and that "if you’re a kid, grownups really do seem unfathomably powerful, perhaps unstoppably destructive". Jade explicitly draws a contrast between the slasher subgenre and the rape revenge subgenre. In the latter, the revengers are "often destroyed and debased by their own violence". According to Jade, a movie which "suggests that violence is senseless or that the strong target the weak simply because they can" does not deserve to be called a slasher.[5]
A review for the Los Angeles Review of Books explores how Jade relates to the archetype of a final girl. Reviewer Kali Simmons states that Jade is unable to see herself as a final girl because "her own experiences of abuse, in her mind, preclude her from conforming to the Final Girl image of the pure and virginal maiden". The author notes that Jade chooses to ignore some of the regressive and troubling tropes of the horror genre, and that "Jade, unlike the reader, never manages to consciously comprehend how the [final girl] archetype’s repressive and at times unattainable standards can do more harm than good to young women". According to Simmons, a final girl who is left alone with a monster for too long will begin to take on some of the killer's properties, leading to a bloody confrontation. In this way, Jade undergoes a "devastating transformation". The review concludes that My Heart Is a Chainsaw contains both a "celebration of Finals Girls and a cautionary critique of unwavering fanaticism".[6]
Reception
Critical reception for the book was positive. Kirkus Reviews gave the novel a starred review, writing that it is "a magnum opus that has the power to send readers scrambling for more".[7] Writing for NPR, author Gabino Iglesias called the novel "a deconstruction of slasher films that celebrates everything about them". Iglesias praised the novel for its inclusion of complex themes including "child abuse, alcoholism, discrimination, and gentrification" in addition to the horror elements.[8] A review for The Washington Post praised Jade's characterization, including "[her] awkwardness and insecurities, her intractable obstinacy, her refusal to behave in a socially acceptable manner". The review found her to be a lovable protagonist.[9]Rolling Stone praised My Heart Is a Chainsaw for being "both an homage to this trope and a big old “fuck you” to the concept that only good girls can prevail".[10]
