Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #209811 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-15
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH
"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."

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 )

Stuart Weightman, STARBURST
"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."

Customer Reviews

A Bit Too Long
I did enjoy this book, but I felt that it was a short story dragged out. I don't think the story had enough premise to be a full novel. I think it would have been snappier and more intense if it had been 100 - 150 pages long.

enjoyable read
Ok, let's get it out of the way right at the start. Joe Hill is Stephen King's son, if there's anyone out there that didn't know it. Unfair to mention this? Well, Hill's gripping debut novel deals in the supernatural and smoothly references King's favourite rock bands, so the comparison seems appropriate.

What is certain is that Hill has inherited his father's talent for ideas and a driving narrative. He sets his premise- an ageing rock star, Judas Coyne, buys the ghost of a dead man on the Internet- quickly and easily and after that the narrative seemingly unfolds itself, the hallmark of a great story. It would definitely not be fair to compare the writing. King's once prosaic prose is now close to genius, winning over the harshest critics in the literary establishment, so there's plenty of time for Joe yet, but his writing is often clunky in places, suggesting that parts of it needed a closer edit or another draft.

Enough of the comparisons; does the novel work on its own terms? That's a resounding yes. Hill draws you into his characters' predicament, delivering a series of ghoulish set pieces which drive the novel forward. He creates a genuinely frightening antagonist and reveals the story to the reader at just the right moments, leading up to a tremendous conclusion. I am not so sure about the rather unsubtle psychological elements to the story. Coyne's backstory seems underdeveloped and ultimately links unconvincingly to the cetral narrative. However, this is a very enjoyable and deeply satisfying first novel from a talented young writer.

Inventive, charming, gripping and damned scary!
Horror (perhaps more than any other genre) has had to change, adapt and reinvent itself though the ages. From the gothic to the psychological to the supernatural to the unrelentlessly gory horror has had to change in order to fulfil its function - to be scary. As we, as a culture, become more jaded mere ghost stories are hardly enough to shiver our timbers.
It is refreshing then that authors like Joe Hill have no need to reinvent the wheel to create a gripping and chilling page turner.
Heart Shaped Box is a simple (albeit beautifully told) ghost story yet it is so much more than that. A comment on popular culture, a psychological case study, a satire, Heart Shaped VBox has elements of all of these. But it's the relentless chills that keep you turning the pages and the intelligence and originality that keep readers returnign to the book again and again.