Mapping the Interior

Thanks to Tor Nightfire for a physical arc of this beautiful rerelease!

A unique haunted house story unlike anything else I’ve read. Someone (or something) passing a doorway. A reflection caught out of the corner of the eye. A shadow where there shouldn’t be. We’ve all heard or seen or read stories like these. But what Stephen Graham Jones is offering isn’t a boy haunted by the ghost he thinks he’s seen, but a boy encouraging the ghost it could have been.

After the death of his father, his mother moved him and his brother away from the reservation. But if his father died elsewhere, how could he find them here? Is his father returning to save him? His brother? To make his mother less lonely? To make them whole again? He certainly thinks so, and will waste away the nights just praying for another glimpse of his hero.

As much as this story is gut wrenching, it’s also about the boy’s hope, and regardless of whether or not that can be perceived as naive, that’s what hit me so strongly in this one. A novelette length examination on the lengths in which hope can bind us to the past, to the need of a father, to the almost vampiric nature of holding on.

This was weird

This is my third reading of Stephen Graham Jones, and I've yet to warm to his writing style.

Yikes. This was a really good read, but tough. That shift where Junior felt like his father was a benevolent presence to realizing he was a dangerous one was really interesting. I liked that it was being told from the perspective of grown-up Junior, and hearing about the life he ended up having, and Dino not really getting much better...it felt too real, like this horror/magic story should have had a happier ending. But it didn't. It just ended up like life ends up.
This book is about perpetuating your trauma. Real life isn't a story, happy endings aren't easy or inevitable, usually we all just turn into what we feared and hated and can't break the cycle.

This was a hauntingly beautiful story about intergenerational trauma and how cyclical neglect can be. The horror elements weren't really “horrifying” in the traditional sense, but the overall mood of the story is tense and dreary. I had to take a deep breath at the end because I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath during the final section.

There's definite creep, definite sadness. The ending is nicely tragic.

Beautiful in a horrifying way, sad and longing, I loved this story.