Mapping the Interior
Ratings31
Average rating3.9
"Brilliant." —The New York Times Mapping the Interior is a horrifying, inward-looking novella from Stephen Graham Jones that Paul Tremblay calls "emotionally raw, disturbing, creepy, and brilliant." Blackfeet author Stephen Graham Jones brings readers a spine-tingling Native American horror novella. Walking through his own house at night, a fifteen-year-old thinks he sees another person stepping through a doorway. Instead of the people who could be there, his mother or his brother, the figure reminds him of his long-gone father, who died mysteriously before his family left the reservation. When he follows it he discovers his house is bigger and deeper than he knew. The house is the kind of wrong place where you can lose yourself and find things you'd rather not have. Over the course of a few nights, the boy tries to map out his house in an effort that puts his little brother in the worst danger, and puts him in the position to save them . . . at terrible cost. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
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This is my third reading of Stephen Graham Jones, and I've yet to warm to his writing style.
Contains spoilers
There's this magic that SGJ always does, where you think one thing is going on but it's been another the entire time, and it's obvious but not, and clever but not too clever. Basically, it's got the type of arcs and changes some authors could never think up, or if they did they'd write the book around that and make it all too obvious and wrong, but SGJ writes it how he does because it's the only way he could think about it, maybe, so it's not even treated like that big of a surprise in the world. Which I”m being vague about. Might as well say and mark for spoilers: how the dad's been sucking the life out of the brother and not giving him life – that's such a perfect thing. It fits so well thematically that it should have been obvious from the start, and maybe it wasn't a surprise for some: but yeah, it was that SGJ moment of reversal where it was obvious but not and yet clever but not too clever. The sort of plot arc that SGJ does with such ease that makes me coming back to everything he puts out.
While it's not my favorite short sci fi novel about father/son grief (LONG TRIAL by SGJ winning the ticket there), it's still a wonderful book.
This was a hauntingly beautiful story about intergenerational trauma and how cyclical neglect can be. The horror elements weren't really “horrifying” in the traditional sense, but the overall mood of the story is tense and dreary. I had to take a deep breath at the end because I hadn't realized I'd been holding my breath during the final section.
