Book Review: Readings

HEART-SHAPED BOX

by Joe Hill

Morrow, 384 pp., $24.95

He is his father's son in many ways, but one thing that sets Joe Hill apart from his sire is the fact that Heart-Shaped Box, his first novel, is far more accomplished and intellectually sinuous than Carrie, his dad's debut. Hill has spent a decade ducking his lineage (last week's New York Times Magazine piece effectively ended that charade) while honing his literary skills – some of which appear to be genetic – to a scythelike precision.

Let's be blunt: Heart-Shaped Box, the story of a washed-up goth-rocker who buys a ghost on eBay and then finds himself haunted and hunted by the vengeful shade of a carelessly discarded girlfriend's evil uncle, rocks. It's a flat-out, white-line, turbo-charged, relentless, bleakly humorous, and, above all, honest story about the horrific and corrosive properties that unchecked familial dysfunction can have on people and the collateral damage that can be inflicted, consciously or otherwise, on those who love them. Hill, like his father (and his mother, writer Tabitha King) before him, has mastered early on the intricacies and nuance behind creating empathetic characters, the single most difficult part of the gig.

From misogynistic protagonist, the aptly if obviously named Judas Coyne, to the maleficent hellbilly preacher man who spooks him, Hill's people are, to a one, fully, vibrantly, vitally alive on the page (even when they're dead). No mean feat. Anyone, if they put their mind to it, can set pen to paper or fingertips to keyboard and come up with the skeleton, gore-flecked and chattering, of a halfway-decent horror show. Envisioning the worst has never been a stumbling block for the human imagination. Hill's fealty to the autumnal suspirations of the darkest sorts of dread (in Heart-Shaped Box, it's the death of a father as battled and ultimately embraced by the son) is instantly apparent. And this, as they say, is just the beginning.