I have Amanda Palmer to thank for my discovery of Joe Hill. About five years ago, she blogged about a “kind gentleman” and a friend of Neil Gaiman who brought her beer in the janitor’s closet at a concert venue she was playing at in Portland, Maine. As an ardent AFP+NFG acolyte, that same afternoon I checked out every Joe Hill work from my local library, which, at the time was 20th Century Ghosts and Heart-Shaped Box.
I fell madly in love almost immediately, and by the time Horns came out the following spring, neither Hell nor high water could keep me from seeing him read on his book tour. I even still have the light-up horns he passed out as party favors. So when I was asked if I wanted to review Horns the book and Horns the movie, I jumped at the chance so fast I practically lit my email on fire.
Joe Hill is a master at telling a story that feels both mundane and magical, where the supernatural is real and reality is fantastical. When Ig Perrish wakes up the morning after the anniversary of his girlfriend’s rape and murder, he has the world’s worst hangover and a frightening pair of horns growing out of his head. The horns should cause an existential crisis wherein Ig’s entire worldview collapses around him and the reader, but it’s tempered by the sheer indifference everyone has about them. It’s not that they don’t notice or care, but what the horns do to them overwhelms any concern they might feel.
Ig and his horns inspire people to reveal their worst thoughts, and they seek his blessing to do atrocious things. He’s equal parts devastated, enraged, and relieved to learn what everyone really feels about him, and engages in acts of revenge, mercy, or forgiveness as he sees fit. It’s as cathartic for him as it is for his “victims.” Ig quickly learns he can inspire and goad, but not force, and then discovers the line between cajoling and compulsion is a fine one. As Iggy tries to figure out the extent of the horns’ power and what to do about them, he visits his replacement girlfriend, Glenna, a doctor, a house of God, his family, and his ex-BFF, Lee Tourneau. Each visit gets increasingly diabolical as Ig begins to give in to the horns…or perhaps the horns are merely a manifestation of his inherent nature.
The citizens of Ig’s hometown, a small, Protestant city in rural New Hampshire, believe he killed his girlfriend, Merrin, in a fit of rage after a bad breakup, and that his wealthy and famous musician father had the forensics lab burned down to clear his youngest son’s name. Iggy didn’t kill Merrin, but the absence of exonerating evidence or another suspicious party leaves him guilty enough for the public to hate. He and Merrin met as teenagers, and were more or less inseparable from then on. They were Adam and Eve, two people meant for each other, their love forged in the eyes of God, consecrated in a spiritual treehouse, and corrupted by the temptation of experience and knowledge, and crushed at the foot of a diseased cherry tree near an abandoned forge in the woods.
Horns pits God and Satan against each other through their earthly pawns, though it isn’t quite as direct as that. Neither deity make a literal appearance, but their influence stains Ig’s world like blood or bleach. It’s telling that the devil of the piece only inflicts cruelties on those who genuinely deserve them and steers others toward lesser evils while the angel “fixes” things by destroying everything and salting the earth behind him. Horns isn’t about good and evil as clear-cut, opposing forces, but the wickedness of sanctimony and the righteousness of sin. The Devil grants freedom and encourages giving into your desires, but never promises such indulgences are consequence-free. If you’re willing to sin, you must also be willing to accept what may come from it. At its most basic level, what the Devil offers is free will, while God accepts only strict obedience in exchange for a blessed reward. But which path is right and which is wrong? Are they both valid? Or are they both false? Does it matter? Should it? Why?
Sorry, got a bit distracted there for a minute. Horns will do that to you if you’re not careful. I saw an awful lot of my church-influenced childhood reflected in Ig, Merrin, and Lee, and I keep getting pulled into internal debates about theological philosophies. Any author that leaves you a tangle of thoughts and conflicts gets high marks in my book. It doesn’t hurt that Hill is also a talented writer, craft-wise. The book, like his others, is broken up into several titled volumes, most of which are from Ig’s past and present perspective, but we also get to hear from Merrin, Lee, and Ig’s older brother Terry. Each bring a new translation to the story, each coloring it with their own biased viewpoints, opinions, and ideologies, and each carrying Ig closer to the cold, hard truth about what really happened to Merrin the night she was killed.
Let’s take a sidebar to talk about names. Joe Hill is very good at coming up with great names. The name Merrin and her dead sister Regan came from The Exorcist. Her last name, Williams, might also, but the singular form also means “protector.” Terrance means “tender,” and he certainly has a tender heart buried under all that guilt and shame. Glenna means “glen,” and the wooded New Hampshire valleys are where her story as connected to Ig begin and end. And security guard Hannity is, well, Hannity. Ignatius comes from the Etruscan name Egnatius, meaning unknown, but was modified to look similar to the Latin word ignis, or “fire.” Perrish could refer to “parish,” as in the local district of a church, or “perish,” as in to die violently and to die a spiritual death. Lee Tourneau might be in reference to LeTourneau University, a Christian school in Texas founded by devout Christian and philanthropist R.G. LeTourneau, the “Dean of Earthmoving.” Lee is also a Celtic name meaning “healer,” and if that’s not ironic I don’t know what is.
Like all of Hill’s other works, Horns is about a lot of things. There are layers secreted behind layers buried beneath layers entombed within layers. It’s a painful and deeply sad book about lost lovers and broken hearts, or a darkly tragicomic tale about a the pleasures and vices of sin and virtue, or a moral about seething sibling rivalries and friendly competition gone sour, or a horrific fable about meddling deities who delight in tormenting their worshippers, or an editorial diatribe railing against heartless conservatism and religious indoctrination, or whatever else you happen to feel at any given moment. I’ve read it a few times over the years and each time I come out of the experience having a completely new interpretation. Out of everything he’s written, from his numerous short stories to his novels to his comics, it’s Horns I always circle back to.
Alex Brown is an archivist, research librarian, writer, geeknerdloserweirdo, and all-around pop culture obsessive who watches entirely too much TV. Keep up with her every move on Twitter, or get lost in the rabbit warren of ships and fandoms on her Tumblr.
Great review. Horns was one of the first books in a really long time that I missed after finishing and immediately wanted to read again. I’m hoping the film adaptation does the source material the justice it rightly deserves.
I am a pretty big video gamer, in fact most of the time it’ll take me a month or so to finish most books since I can’t be bothered to stop playing some game or another.
Horns was one of the first books that got me to put down the controller so I could get some more reading in. While it is no longer my favorite work of his (I think I like Heart-Shaped Box better, if not Locke & Key), it was the book that got me hooked on his stuff. And I routinely recommend him to people at my bookstore, especially for the people who tell me they have read all of his dad’s works.
I love Horns, I am always listening to an audiobook when driving. I found myself taking the long way to get somewhere, or driving just a little slower when listening to this book. As soon as the movie was available as an ondemand rental, I ordered it and by a third of a way into it, it became a hate watch. It wasn’t the acting, it was that so much of what made the book special was gone. I am curious to read your movie review and get your opinion.
@nrich, Chrystallynnfairy: The movie wasn’t my favorite thing in the world, but I still enjoyed it. It’s pretty drastically different from the book in a way I thought wasn’t successful but also wasn’t awful. It lost a lot in the translation, but I still thought it was an effective dark drama. Review should be coming in a few days or so.
@reluctantlyhuman: I need to re-read HEART-SHAPED BOX. I really dug it the first time round, but now that I’ve gotten a real feel for Hill, I think it’s time to take another look at his first novel and see what new things I can prise from more experienced eyes.
Great review, I especially liked the comments on the names (which mostly went over my head even though I picked Ignatius as my confirmation name ). I love NOS4A2 more than any of his other books.
@AlexBrown When I think about it like that, If I had saw the movie without any awareness of the book I think I would have liked it better. Off to read your movie review now.
Before starting Horns late yesterday, it was the only novel from Joe I haven’t read. After reading some more of it today, I feel so compelled to keep turning the pages…not unlike the characters feel compelled to speak their truths to Ig.
Well, you made me interested in reading the book, but based on what I hear about the movie — I want to see the movie, so I think I’ll watch it before reading, so I won’t have any biases. It sounds like a decent movie, and most of the disappointment I hear is from book readers. Besides, that’s my usual method with movies vs books — if I haven’t already read them, I wait until after. Movies can never really do books justice (not necessarily the actor’s/writer’s/director’s fault, just the medium)
@RobB: Every time I read HORNS, I tell myself I’m going to take my time…and yet I always find myself binging it over a day because I just can’t put it down.
@naupathia: Def see the movie first. I think the disappointment from book readers comes from what could have been, but even outside that paradigm, it still stumbles as a film. I read many reviews from people who hadn’t read the books after writing this review and they had similar issues to what readers did, but didn’t have the background to really explain why a scene/character/plot felt off.
We read this for our sff book group this spring. We basically thought it was… okay. Everyone pretty much thought the second section was a waste of paper- we didn’t need to be told at length what we’d already been told. There was major dislike of the fridged woman. There’s little character growth. The ending was facile and rushed. Everyone saw talent there but it felt, honestly, like Stephen King lite, like Hill still needed to grow into his own voice. (And half the people there had no idea of the connection between the two when they came to this conclusion.) I honestly thought the naming was something a little kid would do while snickering behind his hand at his cleverness, while adults look on and roll their eyes.
There were sections that were beautiful, but I got the feeling that Hill should write some short stories, because he seems to become lost in this novel at least. I’d enjoy reading something shorter where he has to maintain focus to a higher degree.
@shellywb: Wow. That’s got to be the first negative review I’ve ever encountered for HORNS. Clearly we were reading different books. I thought Ig, Merrin, Terry, and Lee grew tremendously in the novel, just not in a straight line. They became deeper, truer to themselves. And I’m not sure how anyone could not find the poetry in Hill’s writing, but fine. Whatever. Not everyone has to like the same stuff. I encounter the same resistance when I try to talk to most people about the glory of Jane Austen, so I’m used to it. To each their own.
The one place where I really have to disagree is with the accusation of fridging Merrin. I hate that trope as much as anyone, but Merrin wasn’t a victim of it. Just because a female character is brutally killed, doesn’t mean she’s automatically been fridged. Yes, her murder is a catalyst for Ig, but she plays a major role in the book pre and post murder. Merrin isn’t just a love interest or plot device. There are several huge points behind her death, and her life is never devalued by the novel (her killer even valued her, perhaps too much). She’s as much of character as Ig, Terry, and Lee. If we’re going by the official definition through TV Tropes – “to refer to any character who is targeted by an antagonist who has them killed off, abused, raped, incapacitated, de-powered, or brainwashed for the sole purpose of affecting another character, motivating them to take action.” – then Merrin was definitely not fridged.
As for his short stories, there are a ton of them. Most are compiled in 20TH CENTURY GHOSTS, but he also has a bunch through Kindle. Though I will warn that short stories, his or other authors, aren’t necessarily more focused than novels. It sounds more like Hill just isn’t your jam, and, again, that’s totally cool.