Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"What came through the line was a noise like no other Jude had ever heard before, alien and dreadful, a noise like the hum of flies, amplified a hundred times, and the punch and squeal of machinery, a steam press that banged and seethed. [...] it was possible to hear words in all that fly hum, inhuman voices calling for Mother, calling for it to stop."

Before I begin the review proper I have a question: what is the typical speed of ghosts? The protagonists in this novel try to escape from ghosts by driving very fast and I am trying to figure out how fast should one drive to outrun a ghost. Will Subaru be enough? If not, maybe Porsche? Or maybe one would need a jet plane?

I had never liked horror movies but kept watching them in hope that maybe one day... And in the case of movies such day did come, I watched the Swedish horror/vampire film Let The Right One In and fell in love with it because it was so completely different and almost free of the unbearably tired clichés of the genre. In the same way I have been trying all my life to find a good horror book. No luck so far but having heard relatively positive opinions from my friends I picked up Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box (2007), in hopes that maybe this time... But no! I kept reading to the very end not only because I usually try to give the authors a chance to redeem themselves but also because the plot is so extremely silly that it granted me an opportunity to bask in a feel of superiority and laugh out loud.

Jude, short for Judas Coyne, which is a pseudonym of one Justin Cowzynski (in actual Polish it would be spelled Kałużynski), is a retired rock star of the band Jude's Hammer and a collector of "grotesque and bizarre" artifacts. At an online auction he buys a suit which is said to have the spirit of the dead owner attached to it. Well, when the suit arrives, neatly packed in a black heart-shaped box, the trouble begins. The suit is indeed accompanied by a spirit/ghost. What's more, Jude learns that his buying the suit was not exactly an act of free will, but it is connected to some events from the past.

The readers learn a lot about the deceased owner of the suit and about his experiences with the occult. There is a quite well presented scene of a Ouija Board séance. Yet the few interesting passages are drowned in the sea of idiocy about the spirit/ghost following Jude and his girlfriend. What is most irritating is that the speed of the spirit/ghost precisely follows the narrative rhythm: the appearance of the spirit/ghost is slow or fast exactly when needed by the plot. Maybe the spirit is busy with other customers? Maybe there were no tickets on the special ghost flight?

To me this is a typical horror novel in that it contains quite a few inept, over-the-top scenes, particularly in the later parts of the book. The dramatic confrontation in Jessica's house reads like an entry in a contest for most laughably bad scene ever written. But the top honors go to a passage where - I am avoiding spoilers - bad things happen to a certain Martin. My memory is likely not what it used to be 50 years ago, but I seem to remember that orgasm was quite a pleasant experience; having read the passage I am not so sure any more.

I find it sad that the author who clearly can write very well, as evidenced by eloquent, captivating, and often even lyrical prose that can be found in many places of the novel, wastes his talent by employing such a dud of a plot. And I still hope that there are great horror novels, like Let the Right One In is a great horror movie, only I have not found them yet.

One and a half stars.


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