HEART-SHAPED BOX, JOE HILL

Joe Hill’s Heart-Shaped Box absolutely gripped me from the first few pages. Recommended by a colleague who described Joe Hill aptly as “Stephen King (Hill’s father), if he got to the point quicker,” Heart-Shaped Box follows Judas Coyne, a rock star who collects occult and horribly niche items only for the sake of maintaining his hardcore public persona. Eventually, he purchases a dead man’s suit, which results in him and his loved ones being horrendously tormented by its malicious spirit.

The descriptions of the ghost are deeply creepy and visually compelling, particularly in the ways it's described while moving and its terrible eyes:

“Then he saw the dead man in the hallway behind her. His skin was pulled tight across the knobs of his cheekbones, and he was grinning to show his nicotine-stained teeth.”

“Craddock McDermott moved in stop motion, a series of life-size still photographs. In one moment, his arms were at his sides. In the next, one of his gaunt hands was on Georgia’s shoulder. His fingernails were yellowed and long and curled at the end. The black marks jumped and quivered in front of his eyes.”

In addition to the spine-chilling descriptions, the story and characters are engaging and interesting. Judas is cynical, self-centred, and not very likeable, but a victim of abuse that you empathise with. His reaction to the situation feels realistic and relatable, and he deals with it the best he can whilst battling his pre-existing issues and trauma. Like my favourite horror films, Heart-Shaped Box explores these themes by terrifying the audience. It’s a strong contender for my favourite horror novel, threatening the place of Pet Sematary as the scariest book I’ve ever read, and would make an excellent horror film.

THE TENDERNESS OF WOLVES, STEF PENNEY

The Tenderness of Wolves is a novel that I could see making an incredible adventure epic with a Western feel. Stef Penney’s murder mystery is set in Canada, 1867, told from Mrs. Ross’s grounded perspective. Mrs. Ross discovers her neighbour, trapper Laurent Jammet, with his throat slashed in his cabin. On the same day, her son, prone to being withdrawn, goes missing. From there, a Native American tracker, considered a suspect himself, helps Mrs. Ross search for her son. They set out into the wilderness, with the only thing between her and death is the trust she places in the tracker.

Despite how she is perceived as a woman, Mrs. Ross is pragmatic, capable, and driven, and she’s a character I would love to see brought to life on the screen alongside her quietly romantic relationship with the tracker. Every side character is well-developed and compelling too, and there’s a surprising same-sex relationship storyline that is unexpected but feels authentic.

More importantly, Penney’s descriptions of life in the small frontier town in mid-19th-century Canada and the desolate, freezing landscape paint a clear picture. The sense of place is very distinctive and visually realised. Even though I read The Tenderness of Wolves for the first time by a pool in sunny Albufeira, Portugal, I could almost feel the icy winds and numbing cold, so I wasn't surprised to learn that Penney is a visually driven author who could also see her stories as films: “I always wanted to be a filmmaker, but I never distinguished between writing a story and imagining the way that story would look.”

THE LAST CHILDREN OF TOKYO, YOKO TAWADA

The Last Children of Tokyo is a very interesting read. Yoko Tawada’s speculative fiction mostly follows Yoshiro and his grandson, Mumei. Due to some kind of unspecified ecological disaster caused by pollution and damage mankind has done to the environment, old people seemingly live forever whilst younger generations live with a myriad of health issues and often die before adulthood. Tawada presents a compelling premise that I could see as an off-kilter, dystopian satire — Japan has isolated itself from the rest of the world, foreign languages and colloquial phrases have been phased out, odd laws are randomly enforced, common technology no longer exists, and people experience random changes in their sex.

In the story, Yoshiro adores his grandson and occupies his long lifespan by caring for him however he can. As an older person, he’s energetic, physically fit, and remembers a world before his generation poisoned it, but he feels immense guilt that Mumei doesn’t know life without pain and can only read about wild animals and foreign countries. Ultimately, a secret organisation is at work to remedy the issues, and Mumei may be destined to be part of the cure, but the dreamlike narrative focuses more on Yoshiro and Mumei’s relationship and experience in the dystopian world.

STONER, JOHN WILLIAMS

Stoner is my favourite book. It’s a fairly straightforward story, but it has stuck with me like no other because its profundity sneaks up and devastates you by its end. It’s about William Stoner, born 1891 in Central Missouri, and his ordinary, largely insignificant life; from childhood on his parents’ farm through his University life, academic career, and marriage. Stoner is a successful man in many ways, and not so much in many more. Stoner is about the quiet struggles, regrets, and joys of everyday life, and how one man searches for meaning and purpose with no assurance he’ll ever find it.

As a character, Stoner is incredibly frustrating. He falls in love with literature and philosophy but can't find it in himself to express his passion in any impactful way. He marries the wrong woman, and after meeting the right one, cannot find the courage to do anything about it. He loves his daughter but doesn’t save her from his overbearing wife’s parenting. He knows what he wants but feels too disengaged from his own life to get it. Thankfully, the faultless storytelling and compelling prose save the story from being simply depressing, instead creating profound and, in some ways, heartbreaking complexities.

Author John Williams described the novel as “an escape into reality.” In this sense, Stoner would make an amazing film about one man’s life, with a similar tone to The Holdovers, in the way that it's bittersweet and moving. This sentence on the opening page sums up the vibe I’m imagining for the film, starting off with a disarming bluntness before immersing the reader in the whole of Stoner’s life:

“Stoner’s colleagues, who held him in no particular esteem when he was alive, speak of him rarely now; to the older ones, his name is a reminder of the end that awaits them all, and to the younger ones, it is merely a sound that evokes no sense of the past and no identity with which they can associate themselves or their careers.”