‘Heart-Shaped Box’ by Joe Hill

‘For my Dad, one of the good ones.' So reads the dedication preceding the awesome Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. Now I’m not going to tell you who Joe Hill’s father is or what he does (Wikipedia will do that for you) however I will say that great storytelling runs in the family. Likewise, Heart-Shaped Box is one hell of a story. Published in 2007, it tells of one Judas Coyne, an ageing rocker who purchases a ghost over the internet, adding to an already impressive collection of macabre artefacts. But as soon as the ghost arrives, landing on his doorstep in a black heart-shaped box, terrible things begin to happen: his affable PA hangs himself, his latest live-in girlfriend is badly injured, and his German Shepherds, Angus and Bon, are obviously spooked. It soon becomes clear that this is no ordinary, anonymous ghost, and that any unfinished business he has is most certainly not benevolent.

Heart-Shaped Box is an enormously gripping read. In fact, it is probably every bit as memorable as the Nirvana song of the same name. Judas Coyne is an unusual protagonist in that he is hard to love and also something of a has-been, yet it is his shortcomings which inform the novel’s chilling backstory. His past indiscretions quite literally come back to haunt him when the heart-shaped box and its ghostly tenant are delivered to his door, setting off a series of events that leads him back towards the South, where he grew up. His girlfriend Marybeth turns out to be a brave and surprisingly competent ally, helping Judas in his quest to drive out the dark forces that have breached his life. It is truly a thrilling book, the kind that thunders along at a breakneck speed. In the words of Neil Gaiman, I loved it unreservedly.

This piece was originally published on alisonlaurabell.tumblr.com in January 2013.