Hill, Joe: Horns
Horns (2010)
Written by: Joe Hill
Genre: Horror
Pages: 368 (Hardcover)
My introduction to Joe Hill was through his comic book series, Locke & Key (a series MEANT to be read in chronological order, starting with the mini-series Welcome to Lovecraft, thank you very much!). That and my husband's enjoyment of Heart-Shaped Box made me give Heart-Shaped Box a try, and since then, I've been a devoted fan who still hasn't read 20th Century Ghosts because her husband refuses to FINISH it!!!
Since then, I've read every issue of Locke & Key and even got my gummy hands on the short but sweet and lovely Gunpowder. When I heard Hill was coming out with Horns, there was no question I'd get it (well, my husband technically got it) and read it ASAP.
The premise: ganked from BN.com: Ignatius Perrish spent the night drunk and doing terrible things. He woke up the next morning with a thunderous hangover, a raging headache . . . and a pair of horns growing from his temples. At first Ig thought the horns were a hallucination, the product of a mind damaged by rage and grief. He had spent the last year in a lonely, private purgatory, following the death of his beloved, Merrin Williams, who was raped and murdered under inexplicable circumstances. A mental breakdown would have been the most natural thing in the world. But there was nothing natural about the horns, which were all too real. Once the righteous Ig had enjoyed the life of the blessed: born into privilege, the second son of a renowned musician and younger brother of a rising late-night TV star, he had security, wealth, and a place in his community. Ig had it all, and more-he had Merrin and a love founded on shared daydreams, mutual daring, and unlikely midsummer magic.
But Merrin's death damned all that. The only suspect in the crime, Ig was never charged or tried. And he was never cleared. In the court of public opinion in Gideon, New Hampshire, Ig is and always will be guilty because his rich and connected parents pulled strings to make the investigation go away. Nothing Ig can do, nothing he can say, matters. Everyone, it seems, including God, has abandoned him. Everyone, that is, but the devil inside. . . .
Now Ig is possessed of a terrible new power to go with his terrible new look-a macabre talent he intends to use to find the monster who killed Merrin and destroyed his life. Being good and praying for the best got him nowhere. It's time for a little revenge. . . . It's time the devil had his due. . . .
Review style: I'm aiming for no spoilers, so let's see: we'll discuss the humor of the book, without spoilers, why I liken this to magical realism (it's not a very strong argument), as well as how the use of flashbacks help rather than hurt the book, and then play devil's advocate and do the opposite: explain how the flashbacks hurt instead of help. I also make a sorry attempt to compare this technique to a symphony and a progressive metal concert. ;) And there's not much else to talk about here short of getting into those pesky spoilers, so let's leave it at that, shall we? But if you're UBER-PARANOID, just skip to "My Rating," okay?
Maybe you have to have a demented sense of humor like me, but I found several sections of Horns to be just plain funny. For starters, the tone lends itself to dry humor. Ig wakes up and he has horns growing out of his head, and it doesn't take long before it's taken in stride, almost in a magical realist way. What do I mean? One method of defining magical realism is that you're in the REAL WORLD, but when something extraordinary happens, something magical, no one bats an eye. Compare that to urban fantasy where either it's the real world and OMG!!! VAMPIRES EXIST AND I DON'T BELIEVE IT!!! or it's the real world and vampires exist and everyone accepts this as the norm. Hmm…not making a good case for my understanding of magical realism, am I? Maybe using vampires is a bad example, because vampires are creatures, and putting them in the real world and having the real world accept them isn't magic. It just is. Whereas with sheer magic (or, say, horns growing out of someone's head), it's not questioned, it's just accepted as the way of the world and no one asks any questions.
For a real, solid, and most excellent example of magical realism, get your hands on Laura Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate. It's a FANTASTIC book, and a perfect case study in what magical realism is.
Anyway, let's get back to the humor: it's people's reaction, and sometimes lack thereof, to Ig's horns that builds the dry humor. Then there's the casual way people keep talking before they suddenly start spilling every rotten thing they're thinking about, every rotten thing they've ever wanted to do. At first, you think it's going to be predictable, and the confessions are just going to get worse and worse and OMG there's a whole BOOK of this, and THAT'S where the flashbacks really, really help.
Because once we get what we think is the worst confession of all, there's a break, a new part, and suddenly we get backstory. We meet Ig pre-horns. We meet Ig meeting Merrin for the first time, and suddenly, the somewhat two and/or one dimensional characters we've been following start to blossom into real people. People who can cheer for. People you can mourn.
Hill pulled a similar trick in Heart-Shaped Box: for the first 130 pages of HSB, we're treated to pretty relentless horror, as well as characters you really, really don't like. But then Hill takes a break and really gets into the story, gets into his characters, so that by time the horror starts back up, you're REALLY invested.
In this case, it's not relentless horror so much as watching the escalating effect of Ig's horns on other people. Just when you REALLY want to know what Ig's going to do next, we get the backstory, and you know what? I really liked that backstory. Because it helped me get to know the characters, which in turn helped me figure out the real story, which obviously kept me invested. I loved having just a HINT of what happened and why before the flashback, so I could look for clues in the flashbacks. And talk about frightening cause and effect, especially when you look at Lee Tourneau's story. *shudders*
There's a certain tragedy to this book, and that's what makes it powerful. I've seen reviews that complain how just when you get involved with the CURRENT storyline, you're pulled out, thrown into the past, and just when you're involved in THAT storyline, you're thrown back into the CURRENT. Some readers might feel whiplash and feel that said whiplash makes the book lose some power, and you know what? That might be true from some readers. But not for me.
Because when you're listening to a concert, preferably a symphony for this example, they can't start out full blast and keep that level of noise up the entire time. Well, they could, but your ear starts getting desensitized, so you can't notice the more subtle movements beneath all the bombast. So the symphony might start out blasting, but it'll pull back and turn into something quieter, something more subtle, before blasting you at the end. Hell, even progressive metal does this, and it's amazing what you can hear once your ear is trained for it, once the volume lowers just a bit.
That's what Joe Hill's doing here. Some readers are going to enjoy this, while others want to ride full-speed ahead, which is fine, but you miss out on so much depth if you prefer to ignore the slower, softer, character-building flashbacks. It's what gives the ending its resonance, what makes the book worth it.
My Rating
Worth the Cash: I keep debating on whether or not this is a good novel for Joe Hill newbies to start out with. On one hand, it's not quite as relentless: it has moments of dry, demented humor, a love story that's worth watching, and a cleaner ending than Heart-Shaped Box. On the other hand, Heart-Shaped Box is so relentless starting out that it's hard to pull away, and the story that unfolds is really compelling. The ending is a bit abrupt there, though, so I think that if you want to read Joe Hill, but you don't want to start with his short stories (20th Century Ghosts), or his comics (Locke & Key), then Hills is the place to start. I think I liked it a wee bit better than Heart-Shaped Box, but truth be told, I've reached the biased point when it comes to Hill as author: I'll read anything he writes, and it'll take something REALLY bad before I'm unhappy with his work. But this isn't bad! It's good! It's both similar and different to HSB, and I think fans of Hill should be pleased, especially in regards to the characterization. And, of course, the joy of the horns themselves. I love some of the commentary in this book, but fair warning: it may not be for everyone.
Cover Commentary: simple but eye-catching, but I tend to like the color red. But the font placement is good, and I can't help but notice the pitchfork (which places such a LAYERED role in this story, and no, that's not sarcasm). The cover has a nice bit of slashed varnish, and the inside of the book has an interesting bit of Morse Code. I can't translate, but I do wonder if it's the Morse Code that's translated in the story, or something completely different. :)
Next up: Since I can't post the review of Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog until next week, expect a review of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman.