- Hardcover: 384 pages
- Publisher: Gollancz; First Edition, First Impression edition (15 Mar 2007)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0575079126
- ISBN-13: 978-0575079120
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 15.4 x 4.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (61 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 437,439 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Heart-Shaped Box
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Product Description
Review
"A relentlessly scary ghost story." (THE BOOKSELLER )
"Heart-Shaped Box is a horror novel that is scary within ten pages. It takes no time at all to get going after which it holds you in its jaws and doesn't let you go. A brilliantly pitched novel that marks the debut of a major contributor to the field." (John Berlyne SF REVU )
"While the novel's occult elements are horrific enough, the true horror is the very human cycle of abuse, as victim becomes victimiser. And the redemption is achieved without recourse to sentimentality." (Eric Brown GUARDIAN )
"He's successfully woven strands of family drama and American road movie with his horror, and that horror itself combines traditional motifs with images all its own, old-fashioned ghost stories with uncanny applications of modern technology. Joe Hill's debut is certainly the work of an important new horror voice." (Alex Sarll PRESS ASSOCIATION )
"The slick sensory prose, snappy dialogue and a handful of spooky creative touches amount to a well packaged box of tricks. A satisfying box of Black Magic." (Stuart Weightman STARBURST )
"Sexy, scary and modern." (Karen Parsons LINCOLNSHIRE ECHO )
"Disturbing, scary, the morbidly guilty forebodings building to a superbly dark crescendo." (SFX )
"Gory, exhilarating and surprisingly tender stuff. There's fresh blood on the horror scene." (METRO )
"Chilling and disturbing." (SO LONDON )
"There are scenes of great intensity in Heart-Shaped Box, and others of great humor. Jude is a wonderful creation, a fascinating blend of immaturity and world-weariness, lovable because of, not in spite of, his many flaws." (STRANGE HORIZONS )
"Hill's debut novel is as assured a debut novel as I have ever read, regardless of genre. Heart-Shaped Box, itself an entertaining and superb novel, offers hints of a great writing career to come." (SFFWORLD.COM )
"I couldn't put Heart-Shaped Box down until I was good and done. The chracter of the sountern-fried undead dowser and hypnotist Craddock creeped the hell out of me." (Peter Murphy HOT PRESS (Ireland) )
"Joe Hill has gone straight for the jugular with his debut horror story. (He) more than proves his birthright." (Henry Sutton THE MIRROR )
"The King ain't dead yet, but long live the new King. [An] excellent debut novel." (THE DAILY STAR )
"Once you peel the pages of Heart- Shaped Box, the addictive nature of the writing that has made Stephen King among the most famous living writers in the world has clearly been handed down." (THE LIST (Scotland) )
"Stephen King's son turns out to be sexier, smarter and cooler than his dad with this tale about a fading death metal star who buys a aghost over the internet." (THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
"A dark fantasy in the great American tradition. Joe Hill is Stephen King's son and a worthy successor in the family business." (Roz Kaveney TIME OUT )
"Hill writes the supernatural stuff with skill and conviction." (THE LONDON PAPER )
"Joe Hill certainly makes an impressive entrance. He has successfully woven strands of family drama and road movie with his horror, which combines traditional motifs with images all its own; old fashioned ghost stories with uncanny applications of modern technology. Joe Hill is an important new horror voice." (THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH )
"Heart-Shaped Box is a horror novel that is scary within ten pages. It takes no time at all to get going after which it holds you in its jaws and doesn't let you go. A brilliantly pitched novel that marks the debut of a major contributor to the field." (John Berlyne SF REVU )
"While the novel's occult elements are horrific enough, the true horror is the very human cycle of abuse, as victim becomes victimiser. And the redemption is achieved without recourse to sentimentality." (Eric Brown GUARDIAN )
"He's successfully woven strands of family drama and American road movie with his horror, and that horror itself combines traditional motifs with images all its own, old-fashioned ghost stories with uncanny applications of modern technology. Joe Hill's debut is certainly the work of an important new horror voice." (Alex Sarll PRESS ASSOCIATION )
"The slick sensory prose, snappy dialogue and a handful of spooky creative touches amount to a well packaged box of tricks. A satisfying box of Black Magic." (Stuart Weightman STARBURST )
"Sexy, scary and modern." (Karen Parsons LINCOLNSHIRE ECHO )
"Disturbing, scary, the morbidly guilty forebodings building to a superbly dark crescendo." (SFX )
"Gory, exhilarating and surprisingly tender stuff. There's fresh blood on the horror scene." (METRO )
"Chilling and disturbing." (SO LONDON )
"There are scenes of great intensity in Heart-Shaped Box, and others of great humor. Jude is a wonderful creation, a fascinating blend of immaturity and world-weariness, lovable because of, not in spite of, his many flaws." (STRANGE HORIZONS )
"Hill's debut novel is as assured a debut novel as I have ever read, regardless of genre. Heart-Shaped Box, itself an entertaining and superb novel, offers hints of a great writing career to come." (SFFWORLD.COM )
"I couldn't put Heart-Shaped Box down until I was good and done. The chracter of the sountern-fried undead dowser and hypnotist Craddock creeped the hell out of me." (Peter Murphy HOT PRESS (Ireland) )
"Joe Hill has gone straight for the jugular with his debut horror story. (He) more than proves his birthright." (Henry Sutton THE MIRROR )
"The King ain't dead yet, but long live the new King. [An] excellent debut novel." (THE DAILY STAR )
"Once you peel the pages of Heart- Shaped Box, the addictive nature of the writing that has made Stephen King among the most famous living writers in the world has clearly been handed down." (THE LIST (Scotland) )
"Stephen King's son turns out to be sexier, smarter and cooler than his dad with this tale about a fading death metal star who buys a aghost over the internet." (THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY )
"A dark fantasy in the great American tradition. Joe Hill is Stephen King's son and a worthy successor in the family business." (Roz Kaveney TIME OUT )
"Hill writes the supernatural stuff with skill and conviction." (THE LONDON PAPER )
"Joe Hill certainly makes an impressive entrance. He has successfully woven strands of family drama and road movie with his horror, which combines traditional motifs with images all its own; old fashioned ghost stories with uncanny applications of modern technology. Joe Hill is an important new horror voice." (THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH )
Alex Sarll, PRESS ASSOCIATION
"He's successfully woven strands of family drama and American road movie with his horror, and that horror itself combines traditional motifs with images all its own, old-fashioned ghost stories with uncanny applications of modern technology. Joe Hill's debut is certainly the work of an important new horror voice."
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Nail gun for sale - one careful owner.,
By Tokyo Joe (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Heart-Shaped Box (Paperback)
The set-up to Joe Hill's debut is certainly an original one: Jude, an ageing rockstar and hoarder of the macabre, receives an email alerting him to an online auction in which a young woman is selling the ghost of her stepfather. Jude pays the `buy now' price and adds the ghost to his collection, but soon discovers that the young woman had more on her mind than offloading an old ghost.
Hill wastes no time in getting to the crux of the story, and doesn't compromise a thing in doing so. His prose is tight and lively and his use of dialogue never falls short of excellent and at times is reminiscent of Elmore Leonard, the highest praise I can give. Characterisations benefit hugely from the dialogue, and each of Hill's colourful cast has a distinct voice that will leave you in no doubt that they are all living and breathing people and have merely consented to Hill documenting their lives for a while. With the fundamentals nailed down on this heart-shaped coffin lid, I allowed myself to relax. I was in safe hands. Even felt a little pang of remorse for enjoying the book so much, and felt I was two-timing Joe's old man with this new and improved younger hybrid. But it didn't take long to realise that Joe had quickly run out of nails, and the coffin lid was about to fly off to reveal a bunch of dry twigs masquerading as the delicious, maggot-munched cadaver I was hoping for. As good as the writing is, Hill doesn't seem to have any time for suspending the reader's disbelief. Characterisations, though good superficially, lack depth and realism, and when you're trying to sell a fantasy this is unforgivable. For instance, Jude receives a phone call from his friend Danny. Danny tells Jude that he's just killed himself. Jude replies with something like a `sorry to hear that' attitude, instead of the more believable: `Do you think I'm an idiot, Danny? You're calling me on the phone!' All of Hill's characters accept these supernatural developments with similar pinches of salt. Structure and focus is the second of the claw-hammers to go to work on that flappy lid. Long and pointless passages that add nothing to the story, meaningless plot threads that only ever lead to dead-ends. Short chapters which at first give the illusion of pace become clumsy tools for dissecting perfectly good scenes, randomly assigned way stations for a publisher's perceived attention-deficient modern reader. Once your eyes are opened to all this, and you realise you're not is safe hands, you start to notice it isn't a coffin at all - just a soggy cardboard box that will fall apart if you touch it. And it does fall apart. By far the weakest and most frustrating part of Heart-Shaped Box is the gargantuan array of plot holes, and it makes me angry that Joe Hill thought he could serve this half-baked pulp cake. Given the privileged platform from which Hill is afforded to pedal his wares, he should at least be fulfilling his duty as storyteller. If his dad can hold a plot together over a thousand pages, Joe has no excuses for letting a mere four-hundred-pager slip from his grasp.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
American gothic,
By
This review is from: Heart-Shaped Box (Paperback)
I'm a big fan of supernatural horror (ie, ghosties!) and when I spotted this as a staff recommendation at my local bookshop I immediately snapped it up and went home to read it.
I loved the premise - a modern tale of an aging rock star who buys a haunted suit on the internet. So simple and so full of narrative promise. The first few chapters were truly chilling. Jude's first encounter with the ghost - the spirit sitting quietly, head down, in an old chair outside his bedroom, Jude creeping past trying not to be noticed - resulted in a sleepless night for me. The sheer simplicity of the descriptions, the silence and the menace, were very effective. I woke the next morning and wondered if I should read the rest of the novel before sleep, or somewhere a little more public and comforting during the day. However, the remainder - and bulk - of the story, while quite compulsive, lacked the same chill factor. There were wonderful touches - particularly the ways in which the ghost tormented Jude through the radio, TV and even an electrolarynx in a crowded diner and how he climbed out of an old heart-shaped sweet box on the floor of Jude's childhood home - but it was like watching an enjoyable horror movie, enjoying the imaginative thrills but never really feeling terrified, or particularly tense. For me, one of the narrative's weaknesses was the lack of real fear on the part of the main protagonists. If I had to imagine being relentlessly stalked by a vengeful spirit, determined to kill me and anyone who attempted to help me, I think the fright would kill me long before the ghost did. And this is what I expected to feel when reading the novel. But Jude, whilst seriously ticked off, is more than a match for his adversary. I couldn't relate to him at all or feel scared on his behalf. Also, early on in the novel a fairly righteous reason is given for the ghost's murderous quest. Through a later twist of sorts, the real reason is revealed, and for me this lessened the novel's impact by further demonising the spirit and absolving Jude of any true wrongdoing. Although Joe Hill presents Jude as a flawed anti-hero on the road to enlightenment and redemption, I think the novel would have been far more interesting had Jude really deserved what was chasing him.
7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Heart Shaped Mockery,
By
This review is from: Heart-Shaped Box (Paperback)
I was really looking forward to reading this, I'd had a few recommendations from people I know about it and what I knew of the basic story sounded intriguing. What's more, when I actually started the book, the first few dozen pages grabbed my attention and I wanted to carry on reading. BUT the longer it went on, the more quickly I wanted it to end and when the end did come, it seemed like a cop-out, like Hill had written so much of the book and didn't then know what to do to bring it to a conclusion. On top of that none of the characters in the book elicit the slightest bit of sympathy or interest, the dogs were the only protagonists I felt for (and I'm no animal lover). If Hill wants to stay in this line of work, he's going to have to up his game a fair old bit - many of the key elements to this kind of book, 'victims' that you care about, a plausible plot, pacing are just missing. The whole thing trudges along more like some sad old Judas Coyne-like rock dinosaur than an electrifying young punk.
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