(Aug.)įollowing the success of The Only Good Indians (2020), Jones returns with a love letter to the slasher film. Horror fans won't need to have seen all of the films referenced to be blown away by this audacious extravaganza. Meanwhile, the tension builds to a graphic finale perfectly appropriate for the novel's cinematic scope. Jones weaves an astonishing amount of slasher film lore into his novel, punctuating the text with short term papers written by Jade on the history and functions of the genre. Certain that the deaths presage a bloody slaughter, she tries-with little credulity from authorities-to warn the town of what is coming. When a spate of bizarre deaths targeting the wealthy residents of Proofrock's newly developed Terra Nova community rocks the town, Jade recognizes all of the elements of her favorite films' formulae at play. Its outsider heroine is Jade Daniels, an affectionately cheeky 17-year-old high schooler of Blackfoot descent, who finds escape from her dead-end life in rural Proofrock, Idaho, by gorging on a steady diet of slasher flicks. Jones (The Only Good Indians) expertly mixes the frightening and the funny in this no-holds-barred homage to classic horror tropes written under the heady influence of splatter films. My Heart Is a Chainsaw is her story, her homage to horror and revenge and triumph. A girl whose feelings are too big for her body.

A portrait of the scared and traumatised little girl beneath the Jason Voorhees mask - angry, yes, but also a girl who easily cries, fiercely loves and desperately wants a home. Yet, even as Jade drags us into her dark fever dream, a surprising and intimate portrait emerges. But when blood actually starts to spill into the waters of Indian Lake, she pulls us into her dizzying, encyclopaedic mind of blood and masked murderers, and predicts exactly how the plot will unfold. And Jade narrates the quirky history of Proofrock as if it is one of those movies. 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.

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.

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