Yam Cake reviewed I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
A pageturning slasher with lots of heart
4 stars
Content warning Here be spoilers!
Summary The breathless, effortless cruelty of teens is a timeless constant and every high school is its own battlefield. Tolly Driver swims against the current of popularity with only his bestie, Amber Big Plume Dennison, for company. When his schoolmate, Justin Joss, perishes in a terrible hazing accident, the bullies' eyes turn to him. Horrible events that ensue change Tolly and not for the better.
The Setting This book is lovingly set in Lamesa, Texas in 1989 and it will remind you of this often! Sometimes, it's through including landmarks like the Sky-Vue Drive-In which was a real place that opened in 1948! Sometimes, it's through terms that might just bounce off Texas natives, but appear thoroughly arcane to folks like me.
Terms I learnt from this book ✔️ Blacktop (Tarmac) ✔️ Glasspack (Automobile muffler) ✔️ Pumpjack (Also called a grasshopper pump) ✔️ Chihuahua (A Sky-Vue special: a taco with cabbage, pimento cheese and chili smeared between fried corn tortilla shells.)
What Killing Machines Are Made Of The stoic, unkillable killing machine is the type of slasher that rules the roost in Lamesa. There'll be no Freddy-eqsue wisecracking here, thank you. There's a certain distance created between killer and victim through this slow but determined action, where the killer and victim are simply performing their roles assigned to them by the slasher gods. The Tolly that goes on rampages is very different from the Tolly that rides along with him. Stephen Graham Jones (SGJ) gives us cool cues that wouldn't be out of place in a video game, or heck, an actual slasher movie. A face that feels numb and rigid plus the loss of colour perception are big red flags that Tolly is in slasher mode. But to show us that he's changed forever, even when he's out of slasher mode, he survives being hit by a truck and can't ever unsheath a knife without an accompanying schiiiing!
The Heart of A Slasher While the blood count of this book is pretty healthy, I Was A Teenage Slasher is at its heart a book about relationships. SGJ is a master at crafting relationships that feel nuanced and painfully real. I loved Tolly's relationship with his parents. I thought it was a really nice touch that their VHS movie night tradition carried on after his dad passed—I loved how his mum even took up the mantle of falling asleep halfway, just like his dad used to. I loved Tolly and Amber's conversation with the Josses at the cemetery, how they carefully navigate around each other's grief. I loved Tolly and Amber's friendship, how they grow apart and then grow closer again as Tolly finds himself in a crisis, one which only someone like Amber—with her slasher and Tolly know-how can spot.
One thing I'm unsure about is the nature of Tolly's love toward Amber. I know he loves her, enough to die for her, just like how she desperately tried to avoid hurting him after he goes all Jason Voorhees. But I'm not sure if this is a platonic or romantic love, or frankly, that this distinction even matters? (Though I suppose it would be sadder if he did love her in a romantic way, because she might never know.)
Lingering Questions Did Justin Joss's death kickstart a whole chain of deadly events in Lamesa, Texas in 1989? Or was it a careless flick of blood on his grave that did it, gave him enough life to return as a slasher? Would the bloodshed have ended when Justin got his dues, had his blood not "infected" Tolly? I don't think the absence of answers here diminishes the brilliance of I Was A Teenage Slasher in any way, in fact I like how it adds a little supernatural mystery to the mix.
