Heart Shaped Box by Joe Hill

"Buy my step-father's ghost." You'd think this was a novel idea, but it is something you can find on ebay today. I was going to link something here but got the heebie jeebies just searching for haunted items and don't need the bad vibes right now. Although I have to wonder, does it increase the value of an item to describe it as haunted? In either case, buyer beware!

Heart Shaped Box is Hill's first full-length novel, published in 2007 (he also published a collection of short stories two years prior to this called 20th Century Ghosts). I had read Hill's Horns and liked it. I have also heard good things about Nos4A2, but haven't gotten my hands on it yet. In the meantime, Heart Shaped Box landed on my bedside table.

The owner of said box is Jude Coyne, a rock star who likes to collect macabre items like the skull of a trepanned peasant which makes for a good pencil holder, apparently. And after looking up what trepanning is, I get it. So when he sees an ad for a ghost, he can't resist, throws caution to the wind, and goes all in with the "buy-it-now" button - to hell with bidding! Of course, the seller doesn't believe souls can be sold, so they send the dead man's suit, hoping the ghost will follow.  

Jude quickly starts experiencing strange things. Some subtle, like how his girlfriend pricks herself on an unseen pin in the suit, and some more obvious, like seeing a man sitting in the chair in his hallway. The action starts quickly and doesn't let up in this story. And Hill is great at taking fairly mundane things, like describing eating a chocolate covered cherry, and turning it into something macabre - like biting into an eyeball.

This is a fun story about a haunting, but it also involves deeper questions about the things that tie people to one another, in this case death. Through his characters, Hill addresses various stages of death - pre with Coyne's love interests, post a la the ghost, and peri through Coyne's father who is on his deathbed. Hill explores how decisions you make in life can affect all of these stages. 

I am of two minds about this book. There are some really great things going on that I dig - like how Hill can transition so quickly and seamlessly into horror. While I wouldn't describe the book as scary, it definitely has satisfyingly creepy moments and the pacing of the story is just right. There aren't long lulls in the action. 

But there are other things that give me the ick - like a scene that mixes violence and sex, references to a snuff film, child sexual abuse, and the ~30 years age difference between Jude and his girlfriend.  

So while I think overall it's better than it was worse, consider yourself warned!