Of the stories, novels, and comics Joe Hill has written in his relatively short career, perhaps the least likely to make it to the screen first is his second novel, Horns. This isn’t a comment on the quality of the novel (because it is an excellent dark fantastic tale), but rather the premise that launches the plot as well as the nonlinear fashion of the novel. First, let’s get that premise out of the way. About a year after his girlfriend Merrin is raped and murdered, Ig Perrish wakes one morning with horns sprouting out of his head. The horns grant him a power not many people would like: people are compelled to speak their darkest truths to him and compelled to act upon his direction.
Ig is living with Glenna, a woman whom he has known for many years, a woman with whom he fallen into a sexual relationship. This is sort of a rebound relationship after Ig’s girlfriend Merrin was murdered with Ig as the primary suspect. Ig was acquitted when hard evidence disappeared and only circumstantial evidence existed, but that did not stop everybody in his town from passing judgment on him in the court of public opinion. He learns this with everybody he encounters, because they are compelled to tell him.
As I indicated, this is a nonlinear novel and by the end of the first of five sections, Ig learns from his brother Terry that Ig’s best friend Lee Torneau murdered Merrin. An interesting reveal at this early stage in the novel, but rather than robbing the narrative of tension while Ig searches for the true killer, Joe’s reveal heightens the tension throughout the novel. The second of the five sections is basically a flashback to Ig and Terry’s youth, how they befriended Lee and how both Ig and Lee fell for Merrin. The flashback reveals that when the Ig and Lee were very young, Ig was saved (or so he always thought) from drowning by Lee. Because of that, Ig felt an unwavering loyalty to Lee. When Ig first sees Merrin in church, he feels an attraction to her, as does Lee. At that time, Lee and Ig don’t really know each other, but become friends and make an exchange (cherry bomb firecracker from Ig to Lee who retrieved and fixed Merrin’s cross necklace), which allows Ig to make Merrin’s acquaintance. This second section ends when Ig learns that through an accident with the cherry bomb, Lee lost sight in one of his eyes.
The third section focuses more on the relationship between Ig and Merrin, and the magical doorway they found to what they dubbed “The Treehouse of the Mind.” In this section, in the flashback, we see a bit of the night of Merrin’s murder and the day after when Ig is arrested. In current timeline of the novel, Ig’s powers grow, as he denounces God as a “failed character” and begins charming snakes at the foundry where he makes a home. Ig and Lee have some physical confrontations, which spill over to the fourth section of the novel told primarily from Lee’s point of view. Or rather, what is revealed to Ig when he comes into contact with Lee. Revealing the actions and motivations of a villain of the story can rob the story of something, but not in the case of Lee Torneau in Horns. For me, it made the story all the more compelling and ratcheted up the tension as Lee’s eventual final encounter with Ig loomed over the novel. The final section reveals that final encounter and what appears to be the final fate of the characters.
I’ll admit at this point to being a huge fan of Joe Hill’s writing and storytelling, having curated the re-read of Locke & Key for Tor.com last year and loving his other work (especially NOS4A2) prior to reading Horns so I may be a bit biased in my reaction to Horns, so to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the novel is a no duh statement. There were a lot decisions along the way Joe made that helped to make the novel as great as it was. One of the most important was not explicitly revealing how or why Ig grew horns and gained his powers of persuasion. While it would have been interesting to know, it did not serve the forward momentum of the plot. Granted, the reader can infer a great deal from hints dropped by Joe and come to their own conclusions, which makes for a nice “collaboration” between writer and reader.
Horns, for all the fantastical nature of the novel’s dressings, is a novel fueled powerful human emotions: hate, love, jealousy, sorrow, fear, and anger. But for all of those negative emotions, Joe keeps a strong vein of hopefulness in the narrative. Horns in narrative approach reminded me a great deal of the landmark Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons graphic novel Watchmen. Both stories have a core of a murder mystery, with the murder victim dead prior to the “present” of the novel. As such, those murdered characters (The Comedian in Watchmen and Merrin here in Horns) are a large cloud over the narrative whose past is revealed through flashbacks.
Much like Ig’s growing horns compelled characters to speak their dark truths to Ig, Joe Hill’s narrative power in Horns grew as the novel progressed and provided a powerfully compulsive read for me. Of course I read the novel after the film was made (I’ve yet to see it), so it was difficult (impossible) for me not to picture Daniel Radcliffe as Ignatius Perrish. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I can’t say. What I can say is that for me, Horns was a terrific read which helps to bolster Joe Hill’s already high status in my personal pantheon of storytellers/writers.
Highly Recommended
© 2014 Rob H. Bedford
http://joehillfiction.com/
William Morrow, Hardcover February 2010
Review copy purchased (actually, a Christmas gift in 2013)
