MAPPING THE INTERIOR by Stephen Graham Jones

This elegiac new novella by Stephen Graham Jones features a haunting in the way that I believe it would actually occur. Not with translucent, floating apparitions banging on walls, levitating over you while you sleep, or chasing you down the halls of your house, but a haunting by something much more personal, quiet, and understated the way it is here.

Jones uses weaves together elements of horror, superstition, family conflict, and Native American culture and lore to tell a coming of age story about a young boy searching for ways to connect with his dead father, who has begun to visit him and his brother late at night. In many horror books, the haunting is an external thing, a disturbance that our main character has to overcome. But here, I believe that the haunting is more interior, more a product of Junior's insecurities and fears than anything else. And to overcome it he has to overcome something within himself.

I do feel like it could've been a little more efficient in it's storytelling though. It feels extra-wordy and bloated and dulled the experience a bit.

Big ups to Netgalley and Tor Books for the Advance Reader Copy in exchange for this honest review.

GRADE: B-