Horns: A Novel

I don't know what to say. I love Joe Hill as a writer. I actually prefer his writing to that of either of his parents, and I don't say that lightly. I think he has tremendous heart and talent, and I know I want to follow his career.The problem with reviewing Horns is that it's two great stories that should have worked well together, but they don't. In fact, the two stories should have dovetailed into one, but they the blend was off. Mr. Hill introduces us to a Kafkaesque tale with astute dark humor and moments of pathos.Ig wakes up to discover he has horns and the horns affect others by making then spew out their worst secrets. After Ig has pretty much every one he cares about, other than the dead girlfriend who he's suspected of killing, say the most vile things to him, his demon nature grows. I think most people would agree that we're better off that we don't know the worst thoughts others hold about us, and that others are better off not knowing every random mean thought that pops into our heads. The truth is that none of us are our worst or best thoughts, but are to be judges by our choices and actions.It's not too long before one of the horns influenced confessions leads to the other story. We go back to Ig's childhood and really meet the girlfriend who he'll later be accused of killing, as well as their mutual friend, Lee. At first the abrupt shift was jarring and unwelcome -- I felt like I was sold one book and received another and wanted to go back to the original story. However, before long I was engrossed in this story as well. Meeting young Ig helped me have sympathy for the devil (yeah, I typed it.) Merrin, the love interest, was indeed lovable. It took her from being someone we cared about in abstract -- a woman who was raped and murdered -- to someone that stood out as a bright light. When I read what happened on her last night, why it happened, and the missing pieces of the puzzle, I cried. Caring about her made me care about Ig more.The fact remained that whenever the book then returned to modern times, THAT became the story that least interested me. That's right, Hill flipped the script. There were solid moments with Ig and Merrin's dad, Ig and his brother, and Ig and his new (ex)girlfriend, and I was still invested in the spiraling chaos of Ig's life, and deepening dance with the dark side, but it didn't mesh well with the tone of the scenes set in the past. The ending was both moving and an utter mess, and I don't know what to say about it.I found myself on very much of an emotional roller coaster. The book contained a couple scenes of a terminally ill woman being neglected and it triggered some pretty deep feelings in me due to the skill of the writing and experiences in my own recent past. Ironically, a passage in a Christopher Moore book I stopped reading to read Horns did the same thing, but that's another review. My closeness to the issue aside, Hill has a knack of touching me. For an example of one of his most touching and whimsical stories, with a premise that seems absurd, let me suggest:  Pop Art , which can be purchased separately, but is part of his excellent anthology,  20th Century Ghosts I will say with a certainty that there's a lot of meaning and symbolism that would take more than one reading to really "get." I think that's a tremendous mark of quality that few writers in the horror category, even veterans of the genre, can say. While this book was a mixed bag for me, it was in know way disposable, but rather a complex allegory.It was so hard to pick a rating for this as I wrestled with how many things I enjoyed about the book, how many ways I was disappointed, and how frustrated I was left when I read the last page. Well, read it on Kindle, so more like last location. I'm giving it 3 stars, but consider the author to be one of the best in his genre.***Okay, that was the review. If all you wanted was that, you should stop reading, because I'm about to ramble about a weird obsession I have with what it must be like to be the offspring or close relative of someone truly legen...do-you-love-How-I-Met-Your-Mother-as-much-as-I-do, what-up?...dary. Then I plan on rambling on about related topics.There are some people who are or were so famous and influential that they're part of the tapestry of our lives. If Clarence the Angel came down and showed what life would be life without them, well, it would be a noticeably different world. You know, like, being able to say (in essence) "let me fly into the airport named after my relative who was a president and who most people of a certain age an tell you where they were when he was assassinated." I say in essence, because I don't think those words have actually been uttered by anyone anywhere. My point is that that has to be a unique/weird feeling.Which brings me to Stephen King. Love him or hate him, he has been a part of pop culture since the mid-seventies and at least one network would be flummoxed for programming if they couldn't show Shawshank. We live in a world where Carrie at the Prom has resonance. Where the name Cujo serves as either a joke or warning when hanging from a collar. Redrum & in Annie Wilkes We Trust, All Others Pay Cash.Either Joe Hill is brave or has such a calling to be a writer that nothing will daunt him -- perhaps both.Every book takes you into the mind of a writer and shows some of his or her fears and obsessions. When you have a family of writers, the temptation to examine and analyze becomes too much to resist. Joe Hill, every once in a while sounds like a chip off the old blocks, particularly his father, and that's to be expected. Don't we all find ourselves channeling the first people who taught us to speak? King and Hill also tend to capture moments of absolutely horrific absurdity. Hill is not at all a clone though, and brings his own talents to his writing. Hill, in some ways, has the narrative voice I sometimes love in King, only (personal judgment here) better -- and he's still a young writer.Anyhow, check out Pop Art, which is literary fiction-y, and see why I fell in love with Hill's skills. :)

This novel starts off with the unlikeliest of scenarios: a guy walks back from a night of drunkenness and is hung over. He walks into a restroom, which is his own and looks into the reflection found in toilet water. He figures everything's good and well until he sees the two hideous looking horns protruding out of his head. This sounds familiar to those who have read the interviews done by Hill about this book but it isn't something to be known. It is something to be read and imagined instead. Imagine this: Ignatius Parrish has inherited the powers of the Devil and seeks revenge for the person or persons responsible for his girlfriend's horrific death, by way of rape. Such ideas may sound dirty, offensive to the bystander but, strangely enough, it is exactly something to be expected from Hill. He writes in the same vein as his father, Stephen King, but with a younger pop sensibility.Like Heart Shaped Box, this isn't a typical thriller novel but it is a thriller nevertheless. It's written like one certainly. The prose is taut and yet it contains much of the tenderness found in Hill's story collection 20th Century Ghosts. Hill's descriptions are masterful, invoking unlikely analogies and references. Conventional verbs and sentence structures have clearly been thrown out in favor of more sophisticated ones. But, almost as a counter-point, every chapter has been done short and reads swiftly, plus the narrative runs along at a good pace. Although nothing really happens in the first few chapters, where Iggy finds out how his powers can cause people to spill dirty secrets and sins from their lives out into public display, the central focus is still on himself struggling with the Devil's horns that he had been given. Hill soon introduces the factual details of his girlfriend's death in small increments, but it hardly matters by then because the reader has been drawn into Iggy's life too much to do anything other than to flip the pages.Then the flashback of Iggy's childhood comes along and his first encounter with his girlfriend, Merrin, in a church introduces two new characters in a fair swoop. We find that Iggy has a competitor for Merrin's heart, Lee Tourneau. Tension clearly employed, and when Lee saves Iggy's life later on in the story, the unfolding truth of Merrin's death becomes yet more difficult to swallow. Hill has pushed the envelope of horror storytelling so greatly in this book that long time horror readers may find it hard to approach this book with any sort of preconceived notion, even after reading a brief synopsis of the story. That is because, almost as a reversal to the earlier chapters, the later chapters have so many events happening in them (the tree house of Iggy's imagination, Lee's story, Merrin's dark secret...) that it would be almost impossible to put this book down once it starts going.The shifting viewpoints of the book may be counter-productive at times, taking a lot of the pace off the main plotline where Iggy is at the center, but it actually brings plenty of depth to the overall storyline. For example, when one reads about Lee's relationship with his mother, the truth about Lee's inherent evil becomes clearer. The reader hardly can imagine how evil Lee really is until they read his side of the story in its narrative entirety.One might wish that the novel had more depth in terms of the technicalities surrounding the supernatural themes found in this book. Other than a pop perspective of how Iggy eventually acquires a pitchfork and such there is little academic information on how he actually becomes the Devil himself. The explanation feels ridiculous here and almost requires a pinch of salt to suspend one's disbelief around. But Hill does an admirable job of making the supernatural themes believable, bringing the motivations and the roots of the characters down as closely to the ground as possible. With an outrageous style like his, that would be easy.This book is very much the spiritual successor of his first novel, Heart Shaped Box. The protagonist finds himself in some supernatural tribulation and has to find his way out. The style reads dirtier here but it still has the pop undertone to it. This book, however, has vastly different themes in it. Things like teenage love, hangovers, romantic rivalries, sexual abuse are what set this apart from the former. This is something long time readers would be happy about; this is basically more of the same but still radical enough, trashy enough to kick your legs from under you. It's what Hill is good at, always have been.

The Fireman and NOS4R2 were more dark and gripping but I still enjoyed this. Same style of writing, with so much of what is happening being part of reality and part inside your mind. Kept me turning pages into the night.

„Die Hölle, das sind die anderen.“ Was schon Jean-Paul Sartre wusste, muss Ig Perrish schmerzhaft erfahren. Dabei meinte er doch schon, in der Hölle zu leben, seitdem seine Freundin ermordet wurde. Nun aber wacht er auf und muss erschrocken feststellen, dass ihm über Nacht Hörner gewachsen sind. Irgendwie passt das, denn die Bewohner der Kleinstadt in der er lebt, halten ihn sowieso für den Mörder. Die Hörner verleihen ihm aber auch eine bis dahin ungeahnte Macht. Jeder, der ihn trifft hat urplötzlich das Bedürfnis, ihm seine schwärzesten Gedanken anzuvertrauen. Und jeder, der mit ihm spricht, vergisst ihn sofort wieder.In Joe Hills Roman „Horns“ liegt der Horror nicht in furchteinflößenden Äußerlichkeiten oder in ausufernder Gewalt. Diese kommen durchaus vor, schließlich wachsen dem Protagonisten Hörner aus der Stirn und ein Mord wurde begangen. Der eigentliche Schrecken liegt aber in den Menschen in seiner Umgebung. Igs Tag wird schlimmer und schlimmer. Indem jeder, dem er begegnet, ihm ungefragt seine Geheimnisse beichtet, wird klar, wie lieblos, wie bitter und unerfüllt die Menschen um ihn herum sind. Ihm, der in Merrin seine Liebe und sein Glück gefunden hatte, wird klar, wie wenig er seine Familie und Freunde eigentlich kennt. So wird er ein zweites Mal entwurzelt, ausgestoßen und desillusioniert. Einen Platz im normalen Leben scheint es für ihn nicht mehr zu geben. Um noch irgendeinen Sinn zu finden, will er den Mord an Merrin aufklären und Rache nehmen. Unglücklicherweise ist Ig wohl der einzige von Grund auf gute Mensch in der Geschichte. Leicht wird ihm seine Aufgabe nicht gemacht.Joe Hill ist ein junger Autor und eine echte Überraschung. Auch wenn er sich teilweise ein bisschen zu viel Zeit dabei lässt, die Handlung zu schildern und zu erklären, hat er sich eine ungewöhnliche Geschichte ausgedacht, die sich nicht so einfach vor Gruselkarren spannen lässt. Er legt den Schwerpunkt auf die Gesellschaft und den Umgang miteinander. Erstaunlicherweise liegt genau darin der wahre Horror. Ig Perrish ist ein guter Mensch, der vor einiger Zeit noch ganz naiv an ein erfülltes Leben geglaubt hat und dem der Boden unter den Füßen weggerissen wurde. Es ist nicht immer leicht, mit ihm zu fühlen, da er sich über weite Strecken der Geschichte schlicht weigert, an Schlechtigkeit zu glauben. Gleichgültig lässt er seine Leser aber nicht, denn das ihm zugefügt Unrecht ist zu groß. Dazu kommt, dass die Geschichte eine ihr eigene Dynamik entwickelt, die es den Lesern schwer macht, das Buch an die Seite zu legen. Der Stil verrät, dass es sich bei Joe Hill um den Sohn des Erfolgsautoren Stephen King handelt. Tatsächlich wirkt Hills Schreibe streckenweise einfach vertraut. Das schadet aber nicht, da er ihr seinen eigenen Stempel aufdrückt. „Horns“ lohnt sich. Kein Wunder, dass es mittlerweile verfilmt wurde. Ich habe es meinen Freunden wärmstens empfohlen.

A journey, well drawn characters with depth. Thought provoking and tender, it’s a good book that can show life without a filter and still be sympathetic to the characters it reveals.

Iggy Perrish erwacht nach einer Nacht, in der er schlimme Dinge getan hat, reichlich verkatert und muss feststellen, dass ihm Hörner aus der Stirn gewachsen sind. Aber das ist nur ein weiterer Stein in dem Rucksack, den er mit sich herumschleppt, denn er wird immer noch verdächtigt, vor einem Jahr seine Freundin erschlagen zu haben. Schnell merkt Iggy, dass die neuen Körperteile mit einer besonderen Gabe ausgestattet sind: Sobald jemand sie erblickt, verfällt er in eine Art Trance und plaudert bereitwillig die dunkelsten Geheimnisse seines Lebens aus. Auf diese Weise entdeckt Iggy rasch die Identität des wahren Mörders und plant seine Rache. Ganz so einfach ist das jedoch nicht, denn seine Fähigkeiten sind begrenzt und sein Körper beginnt, sich weiter zu verändern...Joe Hill ist mit "Horns" erneut ein höchst veritabler Horrorthriller gelungen, flott und verdammt spannend geschrieben, dazu eine Menge schwarzer Humor gewürzt mit Empathie, eine exquisite Mischung. Natürlich ist der Leser versucht (ich nehme mich da nicht aus), in seinen Büchern Parallelen zum Werk des berühmten Vaters zu finden, aber das sollte man der Fairness wegen unterlassen; es ist auch nicht nötig, denn der Autor kann sehr gut auf eigenen Füßen stehen. Nach einem rasanten Start erfolgen dann etliche Rückblenden mit einigen Längen, aber die Protagonisten sind allesamt stimmig in die Handlung eingebaut, die beim Leser zu keinem Zeitpunkt Langeweile aufkommen lässt. Außerdem: Wer ein Kapitel seines Buchs mit "The Gospel according to Mick and Keith" betitelt, hat nichts anderes als die Höchstwertung verdient!

Could have used a bit more flow between the characters and the storyline, I can't believe that someone gains so much power only to be then beaten up by a mear mortal?? Love, Horror story, got that but there could have been more depth to this story.