Finding Home
And the best horror I read this month.
How do you define home? Is it the postcode that falls into your lap with the morning mail? The city you live in? The people you surround yourself with? What are the essentials that have to come together to create something you would be happy to call home?
I’ve always found that idea (and the line that separates home from house) fascinating. It’s a constant source of inspiration and a great backdrop for horror. In last month’s newsletter, I talked about falling for Shirley Jackson’s treatment of home and, within that, her dark take on suburbia.
Particularly in the last year I’ve started to realise that home, or at least its potential, is everywhere. It’s tucked into conversations, waiting on blank sheets of paper and tied into scents that transport us elsewhere. It’s malleable. It’s personal.
A home is only as haunted as you make it.
Sometimes you finish a book and all you want to do is tell someone about it. Last night I finished The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones. It was the first of his books I’ve read (it won’t be the last) but it was one of those ‘I’ve gotta tell someone about this’ reads.
Without going into spoilers, it centres on four American Indian men haunted (and hunted) by an illegal elk hunt that happened ten years prior. The story is a true page-turner, split into different sections that recount the experiences of each character.
It felt more like a sprint than a marathon and is filled with visceral, brutal language (I’ll never look at elk the same way again), bloody horror (at its heart the book’s a slasher) and experiences that don’t shy away from what it’s like to live as an Indian in America today.
As a book that made a lot of noise in the horror world last year, I entered with high expectations. I’m happy to say the noise was well placed.
If you’re interested in reading The Only Good Indians or want to hear more about it, this interview gives a deeper look at Jones’s approach to horror, portraying the Native American experience and when the book’s initial seed was planted.
Every year I try to get my hands on my favourite album of that year on vinyl. I enjoy the physicality of it. I like being able to hold sound and see the artwork up close, instead of a block of pixels on Spotify.
This year, with a month to go, I already know what takes top spot. And while it’s lyrically, sonically, aesthetically a treat, it got me thinking about why something takes top spot. What makes something stand above the rest?
I don’t have an answer, but I do know there’s nothing like discovering a project or experience that just ‘gets’ you. A piece of music, film, writing or art you’ll cling to for the rest of your days, referring back to it when you need that push.
I hope this month you managed to find something that made you stop. Something that made you think there might be others out there, somewhere, who view the world as you do.
Before you go
I live in other corners of the internet. Every Tuesday, I post new micro-fiction on TikTok. I also attempt to keep an Instagram updated and tweet every now and then.
/ JW