Book Review : Joe Hill - Heart-Shaped Box (2007)
I love the song Heart-Shaped Box, by Nirvana. It's creepy and ominous and dripping with an apathetic resentment that only Kurt Cobain could communicate so powerfully. Now, I would lie if I said that I bought Joe Hill's debut novel Heart-Shaped Box only because of the Nirvana song. That would be a dumb thing to do. But I bought it partly because of the song (Hill explains its influence in the foreword), partly because it's about a metal musician and mostly because it's somewhat of a mystery to me.
These are all artsy things I like. But first novels are rarely great and I expected Heart-Shaped Box to be a decent, but bloated story of a vengeful ghost punishing a well-deserving man (and potentially an undeserving woman) for 400 pages, but it's not what it is. At all.
Heart-Shaped Box tells the story of Judas Coyne, an "aging death metal icon" (who felt like a mix of Marilyn Manson and Machine Head's wounded frontman Rob Flynn to be honest) and collector of morbid paraphernalia, including an actual snuff film that seldom puts him in trouble with the women in his life. When he's offered to buy a ghost online, he doesn't think twice about bidding. Except that Judas quickly finds out there was no auction and the offer was only for him and even worst, the ghost is real and has one hell of an axe to grind with the old rocker.
The Art of Haunting Motherf*ckers
The main quality of Heart-Shaped Box is that it has an interesting main character. Although he comes off as aloof and self-centered like all the assholes who die thirty pages into any boring ghost novel, there's a lot to haunt in Judas Coyne. He survived a violent childhood and symbolically killed the child he once was by turning into everything his father hated. He's kept any form of meaningful personal relationship at arm's length, prioritizing the music and the equally symbolic exorcism of his dad's memory.
Who the ghost is, what he wants and what he does almost doesn't matter. I think Judas says it himself in the beginning of the novel : "Ghosts live in hearts and minds" or something along these lines. What makes Heart-Shaped Box a convincingly scary experience is the ghost bending reality to Judas’ worst anxieties and showing him what his personal and cultural legacy (the only thing that matters to him) would look like from the other side. He's feeding the ghost with his emotional wounds. How fucking scary is that?
I don't know about you, but as a man who spend his entire life fighting off his own vulnerabilities as a survival tool, I find the idea of a supernatural being rummaging my head and showing me how I could flush everything I was and everything I loved in mere seconds fucking terrifying. It's not that terrifying since it's happening to Judas and not to me, but the fact that the ghost is attacking this stoic, self-made loner and seeing through his tough guy image makes Heart-Shaped Box special. A good haunting novel needs a good haunted.
Florida, Georgia, Bamy and All The Others
Another cool detail about Heart-Shaped Box is how the women in his life who he always pushed away come back as, let's say a "positive type of haunting". I mean that in the sense critic Mark Fisher uses in his concept of hauntology. Some would call it Karma. Judas’ past actions come to dictate his present. There's a beautiful, quiet conversation scene Judas entertains with his girlfriend of the moment Marybeth (who he calls Georgia, don't ask) where she explains out loud what is good about him past his rock star image.
That positive Karmic balance, Judas doesn't have it only with Georgia. He has it with most of the women in his life, including a deceased woman who is at the heart of his struggle with the ghost. Judas is a creepy old goth guy, but he's also welcoming and not judgmental. Girls who run away from other stuff like he ran away from his father come to him. I thought it was nice that Heart-Shaped Box has a lot of strong and fun female characters, but I thought it was even nicer that there presence was a reflection on Judas.
Because he's the kind of guy you need to choose to be around. He's not the most pleasant or social dude. Joe Hill doesn't let that "groupie fascination" be just a boring stereotype. Judas Coyne's attractiveness if real and explicable and every important moment in this novel is haunted by an important moment from either his or one of the women in his life's past. That's the part of Heart-Shaped Box that's conceptually haunted if you will. You could say it's just good storytelling and you would be right, but if it's spooky, it’s haunted.
*
Heart-Shaped Box might not be a paradigm-changing emotional experience, but not that many earnest, straightforward novels are that original or well-told. It's a great time. Although it is named after the Nirvana song almost by chance, it is haunted by its dripping, surreal negative energy. The link can only be felt by readers who have experienced both, preferably in real time, but I assure you it is there. Joe Hill is the real deal. He's not just his father's son. He's got his own stories to tell.
