Oh, Horns, you crazy beast.
This was actually my second time reading this book as I had originally purchased and read this novel in 2013 in anticipation of and preparation for the super well known, Daniel Radcliffe career defining movie of the same title (she said with heavy sarcasm). But more on the movie later.
There have been very few books that I have read twice throughout my reading career, and Horns happens to be among them purely for the sake of this blog. And although I figured a second reading of the book would remind me of the things I found odious the first time through, the second reading actually made me come to appreciate and respect Mr. Joe Hill’s writing skills far more than the first time I sat down with this beast.
The plot of Horns is pretty simple: the main character Daniel Radcliffe, I mean, Ignatius Martin Perrish wakes up one morning after a drunken night out to find that he is growing horns. As the story progresses, Ig discovers that these horns give him special powers, most notably the ability to force other people to reveal their deepest, darkest secrets and then act on them. Soon after we learn of Ig’s new headgear, we also learn that in the last year, his girlfriend Merrin Williams has been murdered, and he is the prime suspect, currently being shunned by all of his small town for his apparent role in the murder despite a lack of evidence and his constant vehement denial of the crime.
The interesting thing about this novel is that you learn about the horns, you learn a bit about their powers, you learn about Merrin and her relationship with Ig, her death, and who the real killer is, all within the first 50 pages. And then Joe Hill does something which I am not fond of – he goes back and starts the second section of the book with recollections from Ig’s past and the beginning of his friendship with his lifelong best friend Lee Tourneau and Ig’s first few years of dating Merrin. It’s a sweet story, interesting to be sure, EXTREMELY reminiscent of Stand by Me, but all in all not awful, it’s just the jumping around in time that I’m not a fan of especially, as in this case, when it’s done for dramatic effect.
By the way, the author, Joe Hill…he sort of resembles someone doesn’t he…you guessed it (hopefully) he’s Stephen King’s son. While I imagine that’s a pretty big shadow to try to get out from under, I did gain a lot of respect for Joe when I recently read that for 10 years at the beginning of his career he didn’t even tell his agent that he was related to King in the hopes to set himself apart from his father, which I find admirable, but come on, the similarity is pretty uncanny. Plus he does make a reference or two to his father in Horns which got a pretty big eye roll from me as a reader, but I mean, when Stephen King is your dad I guess a little nod to him couldn’t hurt.
As I mentioned earlier, the main reason for me picking up this book in the first place was because I had heard that it was being turned into a movie starting my future husband Daniel Radcliffe. And after reading the novel the first time, I was more than intrigued by how they could possibly turn this story into a movie, and well, all I can say is that they tried.
Where the book is introspective and explores themes such as what really gives us our humanity and how far we are willing to go to maintain that, the movie is well…unique? In my opinion, the movie turned the book from a hard hitting look at humanity into a whodunit type thriller where the whole point is to find out who killed Merrin; the fact that the main character is growing horns and can hear people’s thoughts is secondary to this main mystery. So the movie was weird, but not entirely poorly done, just very different. However if I hadn’t read the book, and had just seen the movie, I feel like I would have been pretty lost and unfulfilled by the time it was over, probably thinking that the novel itself was nothing more than a murder mystery, which it most certainly is not. But I’m a sucker for anything Daniel Radcliffe decides to take part in, so of course I own the DVD if you want to borrow it sometime.
As for Horns‘ connection to Paperquake by Kathryn Reiss , there were a few things that were similar between the two vastly different novels. First the investigation into Merrin’s death in Horns takes place in October, which is exactly when the two week long tale of Paperquake takes place. Also, in Horns, Merrin’s roommate while she is in med school is planning to move out at the end of the semester and leave their New England home for San Diego which in fact is not far from San Francisco where Paperquake is set. The final connection is a little shakier but still interesting. In Horns Ig’s grandmother, who plays a minor but interesting role in the novel, is named Vera which is eerily similar to the name Verity (or V) which was the name of a character who played a pretty significant role in Paperquake as the girl whom Hal (remember that name from Hit on the House? so many connections!) was in love with and writing letters to around the time of the San Francisco earthquake. So while the triplets in Paperquake probably would never dream of a man-demon on the other side of the country trying desperately to prove his innocence while at the same time slowly slipping into madness, the connections are there!
So out of a possible stack of five books, I give Horns 4 books. One each for story, character development, theme and symbolism. The other book was deducted for extreme wordiness, which all things considered, I suppose he can blame his father for inheriting that trait. However despite that one issue, I strongly recommend both the novel and then the movie after you’ve read the book, as it’s beautiful to find a Harry Potter reference in a novel that was written before Daniel Radcliffe was to star in the movie adaptation, something about serendipity like that makes me smile. 🙂
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