Someday, Joe Hill will figure out how to craft a novel that equals the genius of his short stories. Until then, his full-length books will range between good and really good, perhaps one third act shy of being great. Invest in such hope, because his second novel, HORNS, is better than his first, HEART-SHAPED BOX.
It has a killer first chapter, which I’m now reprinting in full: “Ignatius William Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke the next morning with a headache, put his hands to his temples, and felt something unfamiliar, a pair of knobby pointed protuberances. He was so ill — wet-eyed and weak — he didn’t think anything of it at first, was too hungover for thinking or worry. But when he was swaying above the toilet, he glanced at himself in the mirror over the sink and saw he had grown horns while he slept. He lurched in surprise, and for the second time in twelve hours he pissed on his feet.”
That’s it. How can you not keep going?
Anyway, Ignatius — and who ever gets named that? — has these horns, which turn out to be visible only to him. Overnight, he’s acquired the power of hearing people’s deepest, darkest thoughts, which casts HORNS’ initial chapters as black comedy. Strangers, friends, family members — they all express to Ig their desires to snort drugs, to leave spouses, to defile a colleague, as if he’s on the other side of one effed-up confession booth.
But Ig is no saint. In fact, he’s something of persona non grata around town, stemming from the still-unsolved rape and murder of his girlfriend, for whom he was the police’s only suspect, until an evidence fire and a high-powered lawyer changed the circumstances. With his newfound powers, however, he starts to learn the true story behind her brutal demise.
HORNS then starts backtracking to Ig’s childhood, in order to set up a love triangle that plays out for the rest of the novel. Despite elements of the supernatural, this is not a work of horror — not in the least — but rather suspense, if more of the just-plain-weird variety than pulse-poundingly palpable.
Even if it’s a sly twist on his father’s THE DEAD ZONE, Hill’s story keeps you involved because Ig’s problem is mostly unique, damned funny and oddly touching. What it doesn’t have, however, is a ending that ties things up in a satisfying bow; much like HEART-SHAPED BOX, it feels off by several inches, as if the author couldn’t quite pull the trigger after several hundred pages of plateau.
Make no mistake: Hill’s one incredibly talented writer with a wicked sense of humor and a master’s control of pacing. I’ll happily read anything he writes, as he continues to elevate genre fiction’s reputation with class, rather than crass. —Rod Lott
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• HEART-SHAPED BOX by Joe Hill
• LOCKE & KEY: WELCOME TO LOVECRAFT by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
• 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS by Joe Hill
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