The Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Publisher: Harper Collins, 366 pages

Format: Paperback

Source: Purchased

What it’s about:

Ex-rock star Judas Coyne (born Justin Cowzinski) has seen it all and done everything good and bad, or believes he has. Now he collects grisly artifacts or memento mori just to make himself feel alive.When he hears about a ghost for sale on an auction site, he cannot resist purchasing it.

Once the black heart-shaped box arrives, Judas opens it to discover an old suit. Soon the suit manifests itself as a ghost whose purpose is to kill Judas and anyone associated with him, all related to the suicide of his step-daughter whom Judas had callously mistreated in his former metal band days. This ghost of misdeeds past is named Craddock—just about as Dickensian a name as you can get this side of 1843.   

Fortunately for Judas, and despite his actions to the contrary, his equally damaged, reformed drug addict/pole dancer girlfriend, Mary Beth, refuses to forsake him. She never blames him for the ill-advised purchase of the heart-shaped box that delivers to their doorstep a malevolent, revenge-seeking ghost with links to Coyne’s past.

Just like Dickens’s Scrooge, Judas must put the past right. With Mary Beth at his side, Judas drives his mustang deep into the South to find the woman who sold him the ghost and make amends. And in the process attempt to rid the world of the murderous Craddock.

~~~

What I thought:

Burned out but not burned up Judas Coyne (Symbolic allusion, anyone?) doth confess too much…as in he believes himself more monstrous than he is. A refreshing change, this sort of anti-Judas in search of justice. (Naturally, his given name is Justin.)

Joe Hill is a skilled practitioner of terse, tight writing. Every word seems to have been placed just so to evoke maximum effect with minimal prose. The language is darkly comic at times, grotesque at others, The writer knows how to infuse heart into a character who believes himself to be heartless. This is a journey novel, a sort of Huckleberry Finn trip down the Ohio River, or in this case, the long highway south in search of soul.    

If you like your ghosts on the dark side—or, I should say, char-broiled, as in burnt in hell—then I recommend Heart-Shaped Box. Generally speaking, I prefer my ghosts angst-ridden rather than demon-driven. Bemused rather than evil. However, once I cleared the hurdle of the demonic ghost, I enjoyed the ride, barreling through the rural South on a throaty Mustang in search of redemption.

So, yes, this novel is about revelation and redemption. (I’m a sucker for redemption novels as long as they are not saccharine; this one is anything but.) Instead, it is about the peeling away of sin and memory and the names by which we label both and each other. As Mary Beth (the afore-named Georgia) says to Justin (the erstwhile Judas), “The right words have a charge in them. Enough charge to bring the dead back to the living.”

Ah, yes, that would be redemption.