Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

Published by HarperCollins
384 pages
February 2007
Hardcover
ISBN: 0061147931

The best of the best monsters come from the heart, springing out when we least expect them from where they've been living in plain sight. That is exactly what makes this clever and thoughtful story of Judas Coyne, aging rock star, a classic for all ages.

Jude buys a ghost to add it to his collection of macabre relics, which he believes are drawn to him the way iron is drawn to a magnet. He uses the artifacts like his fans use body-piercing and tattoos, to make himself seem more of the scary sort who plays with such toys, and thereby drive away the even more frightening monsters which lurk in the shadows of his memory. Jude is living the path of least resistance, cruising on autopilot round a moat he dug for himself. This moat separates him from anything which might challenge or threaten his most precious work of art – Jude Coyne, rock star. Threats have all been withdrawn outside his walls, where Jude has stationed competent guards like his assistant Danny, the can-do kid who enables Coyne to do exactly what he wants, any time he wants. Danny is the man who makes Jude's life easy, and ultimately invites in the creature who will try to vengefully destroy the fantasy world.

Judas Coyne's whole life has become an act one step removed from truth – a parody. ‘Judas Coyne' the performer always was a fiction - he has renamed himself and his girlfriends, and separated himself from anything and anyone which could make demands. Instead of playing his guitar, the rock star plays at fixing cars. His assistant buffers him from his family and his career, fixing things before he has to fix anything himself, before he has to even acknowledge anything is broken. His lovers are remarkable, far too young to share a history with him, yet carrying burdens enough for a lifetime already. Sadly like the other treasures in Jude's collection, he considers them dismissible, disposable, as trivial as his cars and the platinum records on the wall.

Into this fantasy world comes the ghost, invited in on a whim by someone one step removed from accountability. The ghost is an internet joke gone a little too real – the dead father of a dead lover. Demanding attention, forcing Jude to shake off his indifference and confront loss and mistakes and the pain around him, the ghost is also out for revenge. The ghost is there to make sure Judas Coyne dies as miserable as his daughter was.

The story progresses through Jude's journey, through the agonies inside him, and the agonies he has ignored in others. Coyne accepts ownership of the pain which over the years he has trained himself to ignore, to “live through.” As the ones who supported the walls crumble like the walls themselves, Jude the man is forced to reach out and re-sanctify his true heart, the musician's heart, and let the love inside him transform the macabre Pinocchio back into a real man.

In the end, the people he takes on his journey to hell are the ones who love him – his own ghosts and his girlfriend and his dogs – and the ones who need his love the most. In the end, it's that love which saves them all, in spite of all the dehumanizing cruelty with which they've surrounded themselves – their scary armor against the scarier real world. The book even ends with happiness and redemption, and a moral resolution for crueler monsters.

There is no higher praise than to compare Joe Hill's story to the best of his father, Stephen King. The voice is fresh and unique and it is everything a monster story aspires to be, on every level. The philosophy is woven through with sharp observations about everything from internet addiction to psychology to talk radio, yet it is never preachy. There are no heroes – only monsters redeeming themselves from even scarier demons which they've spawned for themselves.

by CJ Curmudgeon
web-only review