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REVIEW: I Was A Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones

July 11, 2024 by Seanchalant Leave a Comment

Rating: 11/10

SYNOPSIS

Lamesa, Texas, July 1989

It’s the summer before senior year for best friends Tolly Driver and Amber Dennison. They’re not in the marching band, they’re not in the FFA-they don’t really count. Amber’s the only Native student in town, and Tolly’s only on the radar due to his father’s death.

This is all about to change.

Bodies are dropping fast in this small West Texas town. For a few unbearably hot days that will resonate through the decades and even get made into a TV movie, Tolly and Amber will be famous. Notorious even. Finally, everyone will know their names.

This is Stephen Graham Jones x-raying the slasher genre, interrogating its motivations over the shoulder and in the voice of the killer itself-from a town he did some growing up in, in a year he was also seventeen.

The kills will be poignant, the jokes will hurt, and the violence will be endearing. Everything’s turned around for Tolly, for Amber-for all of Lamesa, TX.

BE HAPPY YOU WEREN’T THERE.

BE HAPPY YOU”RE ONLY READING ABOUT IT.

REVIEW

About thirty minutes ago I thought I had my review for this book pretty much figured out. I’d ramble about my love for slashers, how this book tapped into everything I’ve wanted from a modern slasher. How much fun it is. Those things will still happen, but what I didn’t expect was that I would spend the last ten pages struggling to see the pages through all the tears I couldn’t stop from pouring out. This book fucking WRECKED me and I love it so much for that.

Stephen Graham Jones was already my favorite author. The Indian Lake Trilogy is a masterpiece in my eyes and My Heart is a Chainsaw opened my eyes to a whole new literary world I didn’t even know existed. I thought with that series he has mastered the slasher genre. What else could he do? He gave us one of the best final girls that will live in my heart forever. What’s next? Apparently, a slasher to live in my heart forever.

Tolly Driver is your average teenager, in the background, happy to have his best friend Amber by his side. All that changes one fateful night and he finds himself transforming into a slasher. I don’t want to spoil how it presents itself in him, but it’s a ton of fun, especially if you’re a slasher scholar like myself. Like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man meets Scream.

I’ve been watching slashers for as long as I can remember. Freddy was my gateway and thanks to TV cuts late at night I was able to watch everything from Friday the 13th to Halloween to Pumpkinhead and so many more. I’ve often wondered why I loved the genre so much and I think it’s the familiarity and the structure. You can generally go into any slasher and know the major beats. What makes them fun is what each film does with those tropes. Then I Was A Teenage Slasher came along and changed the game for me. I had no idea what was going to happen the whole way through, even though I kinda did? That made the genre exciting in a way it hasn’t been for me since Scream, maybe Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon.

Stephen Graham Jones does something absolutely incredible with the character of Tolly Driver. He makes you identify with him and really care about him, even as he does horrific and terrible things. And not only do you never stop caring about him, you only start to care MORE as the story goes on. Tolly truly struggles with what he is becoming, and it seems like Fate is working against him every plodding but somehow faster than everyone step. Is he doomed to follow this path no matter how much he wants to fight it? Does he even want to fight it? Told by Tolly himself, you really get inside his head and his life. I feel like I know him as well as I know myself. His voice is distinct and the writing never feels out of character. Some of it even reads like a stream of consciousness and you can imagine him sitting next to you, telling this tale rather than writing it. It almost feels less like a novel and more like a one sided conversation, an almost 400 page monologue.

But Tolly isn’t the only character to love in this novel. Amber, his best friend, is Tolly’s rock through this story, mine as well. It would have been easy for Jones to write Jade Daniels 2.0, but instead he crafts another wonderful slasher nerd to guide Tolly through this mess and try to protect him from what he’s becoming that never feels like Jones is repeating himself. Their friendship is the heart of this novel, and it’s a fucking chainsaw.

There’s so much I want to say about this novel, but if I spoiled it for anyone, I’d probably end up creating a new slasher and I can’t live with that. This novel needs to be read and experienced wholly un-spoiled. If you love slashers, read this book. If you love amazing characters, read this book. If you love books, read this book. Stephen Graham Jones was already my favorite author whose last name isn’t King. Now? Well, Jones is giving King a run for his money.

I will never watch a slasher the same way again. I Was A Teenage Slasher is the best book I will read this year. This might be my favorite book ever. I’ll have to re-read Pet Sematary to know for sure. I haven’t cried that hard at a piece of fiction since maybe The Never-Ending Story when I was in elementary school. Thank you, Stephen Graham Jones, from the bottom of my black heart, for this beautiful story. It feels like you wrote this book just for me. You wield words like Tolly does a knife (SCHTING!) and my life is better just for having experienced your work. I’ll never let it go.

Filed Under: Fear For All, Reviews, Serial Killers, Slasher Tagged With: Book Review, Horror, I Was A Teenage Slasher, Saga Press, Slasher, Stephen Graham Jones

About Seanchalant

Sean Conley (not Connery) aka Seanchalant is an proud father of three little nerds, AnaMaurin Victoria, Landyn Lawrence, and Raylan Aviendha Mae. He is a stay at home dad while his hardworking and wonderful fiancée,
Gabriella Oropeza brings home the 🥓 and he always has a book on his person. On the autism spectrum, he has a tendency to become an encyclopedia on things he enjoys. Raised on horror films (The Evil Dead series is #1) and Stephen King, his love of fantasy was born from Army of Darkness and Tad Williams; cultivated by John Gwynne and Mark Lawrence. He enjoys everything from epic fantasy to urban fantasy, grimdark to high fantasy. His favorite bands are blink-182, The Beatles, and Wu-Tang Clan.

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