I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER by Stephen Graham Jones is a wild ride of a rampage told through the perspective of Tolly Driver, a seventeen-year-old boy living in Lamesa, Texas, in 1989, whose violent tendencies are sparked after an incident at a party gone wrong.
Tolly Driver and his friend Amber are outcasts in their small West Texas town. They enjoy spending Friday nights together cruising and hanging out, but things take an unexpectedly dark turn when they decide to attend a party at a former classmate’s house. Tolly overdrinks and draws the ire of his classmates, who exacerbate the problem before an old tragedy resurfaces and bloody violence ensues. Tolly is a witness and unwittingly becomes part of the slasher trope, with all the powers and abilities of the genre. As the body count rises, and everyone plays their parts, Tolly’s not sure how it will all end or who will be the final girl standing.
I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER will appeal to those who like horror/thriller slasher movies from the 1980s and 1990s. The small Texas town and descriptions of the machine-laden landscape provide an arid and rugged terrain for Tolly to act out his vicious crimes. The author does an interesting job of presenting Tolly and telling the story through his stream of consciousness. At times, it is difficult to follow the action and Tolly’s meandering thoughts, which makes the novel lag in places. However, the ending has a nice twist and a big dilemma for Tolly. Some aspects of the novel are far-fetched and ridiculous, but this is surely what the author intended. The interesting aspects of the novel are Tolly’s metamorphosis into a slasher following horror genre rules, his special abilities (I did have to chuckle when he kept sitting up like Michael Myers after a catastrophic injury), and the final girl dilemma/trope. Filled with bloody vengeful violence, suspended disbelief, gory fun, and fractured, complicated, offbeat characters, I WAS A TEENAGE SLASHER is an interesting and entertaining deconstruction of the horror genre.
From New York Times bestselling horror writer Stephen Graham Jones comes a classic slasher story with a twist—perfect for fans of Riley Sager and Grady Hendrix.
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.
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