1989, Lamesa, Texas. A small west Texas town driven by oil and cotton—and a place where everyone knows everyone else’s business. So it goes for Tolly Driver, a good kid with more potential than application, seventeen, and about to be cursed to kill for revenge. Here Stephen Graham Jones explores the Texas he grew up in, the unfairness of being on the outside, through the slasher horror he lives but from the perspective of the killer, Tolly, writing his own autobiography. Find yourself rooting for a killer in this summer teen movie of a novel gone full blood-curdling tragic.
Damn, Steven Graham Jones is on some kind of roll here. The slasher novels are coming at a furious pace & they are all so fucking good.
If you’ve read his work, you’re probably pretty familiar with his extremely lengthy acknowledgments at the end of his books. Seems like for most authors these end up being about a page or two at most, but for Jones, they are usually somewhere in the eight to ten page range.
In the acknowledgments for THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE, the third book in his epic slasher trilogy (THE INDIAN LAKE TRILOGY), Jones writes a bit about how I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER came to be. He apparently had five months to write THE ANGEL OF INDIAN LAKE, and as a way of sort of clearing his head to write the best finale possible (which he did!), he wrote something else for a couple months.
I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER was born. This book certainly shares a bit of DNA with the INDIAN LAKE books, which I’ll mention here & there. But wow, this stands completely on its own & I fucking loved it.
I think one of the main areas of overlap between TEENAGE SLASHER & the INDIAN LAKE books is just that, like the Scream movies (favorites of Jones), both are very meta/self-aware. The characters know they are experiencing events much like the characters in a slasher film would. What’s missing here (which really helps distinguish TEENAGE SLASHER as its own thing) is that none of the characters have the encyclopedic recall of all-things-slasher-movie that Jade Daniels has in the INDIAN LAKE books.
The book is set in 1989, in Lamesa, Texas, a real town SGJ once lived in. Jones admits there’s more of him in this book’s main character, Tolly Driver, than in any of his other protagonists. Jones’s connection to & experiences in Lamesa certainly go a long way towards creating a very authentic-feeling vibe, and the location becomes a character all its own.
Tolly’s best friend is a girl named Amber Big Plume Dennison, and she’s the only Native American in town. Tolly & Amber are inseparable, kind of the town outcasts, and it’s also pretty clear that Tolly has some Great Big Feelings for Amber. In fact, the novel is written in the first person, almost as a confessional from Tolly to Amber. Their relationship stays platonic, but there’s an undeniable chemistry between Tolly & Amber, even if they would deny it or give the other shit about it.
It’s the summer before their senior year & so life kind of takes on a certain heaviness for them, I think. The book has serious coming-of-age vibes, and I think setting the book at this critical moment in a teenager’s life is really key. These are two kids on the precipice of adulthood & they don’t have much sense of who they are, who they want to be. And both characters are dealing with a lot of grief & trauma in their own ways.
In particular, Tolly’s father has died not all that long ago, and he is working through that constantly. And struggling to not just be “the kid with the dead father,” in a way.
It’s at a nighttime pool party where things really kick off. Some of this book’s surprises are better left for the reader, but whether it was in Tolly & Amber’s best interest to attend this party, they do. And shit takes a really twisted turn, not just for Tolly & Amber, but for all the residents of Lamesa.
Tolly becomes the most unreliable of unreliable narrators, unsure of what has happened to him, or if any of it is even real. All he knows is, now, something takes over and he is out for revenge. The body count starts rising.
If you ever wanted to really get inside the head (and mask) of a slasher, THIS IS YOUR BOOK! It’s a complicated thing, reading a book through the eyes of a killer, but…you’ll find yourself drawn to Tolly & sympathizing with him. At least I did.
This story captures the vibe of growing up so perfectly. Being a teenager… feeling both the enormity & insignificance of it all. Having that one person that you trust completely & connect with in all the strange, inexplicable ways two people can connect. The friendship between Amber & Tolly is for sure at the heart of this book, even as it is put to the test by Tolly’s new…stabby-stabby-kill-kill-kill proclivities.
And as a reader, it’s a challenge, right? Tolly is a great character, and a good kid. You can’t help but feel for him, especially when you see the series of events that launches him into the ranks of Jason, Freddy, Michael, et al. But still…he is a killer. Finding the right angle in order to get the reader to (maybe?) sympathize with Tolly is not an easy thing, but I think Jones pulls it off extremely well. Tolly & Amber kinda captured my entire heart.
I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER also examines in strange & lurid detail all the mechanics of a slasher killer. How do they do what they do? Where does their strength come from? How do they keep bouncing back from one catastrophic injury after another? WHO WILL THE FINAL GIRL BE?!! Read I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER to find out all about it!
Yeah, this was fucking incredible. I don’t know what’s next for Stephen Graham Jones, but I’m reading it. And I’ve absolutely adored all four books in this mini slasher era of his! I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER releases July 16th, and it’s one of my favorite reads of the year so far!
Massive thanks to Saga Press for sending the ARC my way!
Grimdark Dad 