Sins of the father

Mapping the Interior

Stephen Graham Jones

Publisher: MacMillan/Tor

Pub. date: June 20, 2017

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Stephen Graham Jones may be writing the most thoughtful fiction available in any genre. While he has a reputation mainly as a horror writer, this novella and the superb Mongrels, are socio-psychological mirrors into parts of our American culture we tend to ignore. Mapping the Interior may specifically be touching these themes on a more personal level as it is set in the Native American culture with a family that can be called marginally on the edges of the mainstream socially and economically. But if you want to accept that outlook or not, Mapping the Interior remains a powerful if somewhat introverted horror tale.

A twelve year old boy sees his father walk through the kitchen doorway of their house to the utility room early in the morning. His father has been dead for years, but the boy is sure he is back from the dead and becoming more alive and strong with each visit. He discovers that the way his father is becoming strong may destroy his younger brother. He is placed in the position of protecting his mother and younger brother from a supernatural threat and it is his burden alone to bear.

For a novella, there is so much going on here it is hard to give a thorough review especially when it is best to experience the reveals and turns on their own. So I will try to not reveal the plot and its twists and discuss the themes and the delivery of those themes which i believe are the true meat of the story. This is firstly a rather introspective novel. While there are certainly the action segments and impressive scares of a horror tale, it is really about the mind and conflicts of a young boy who has grown up without really knowing his father. The stories he has heard may not be reliable, a parallel theme we have seen in the above-mentioned Mongrels. His first emotions seeing his father, even being that of a spirit, is jubilation but it soon becomes one of dread when he discovers what the price might be. We are talking loss, regrets, and the price of that loss. We are also talking about the reliability and importance of memory. And we are examining all of those in the framework of an unique culture and one whose members are often economically and socially on the boundaries of the mainstream. Our young protagonist may be a boy but the situation he finds himself in forces him to take a man's role. This could be called a coming-of-age story, which it is, but it is a sad and uncomfortable one.

It is always dangerous to attempt to claim how much of a tale is auto-biographical but there is surely a sense that the emotions of the story come from the real and intimate world of the author. I suspect those who like their horrors direct and fast may become frustrated with the pace and the inward reflection of this book. That would be unfortunate because that is where the power is. There are several thrills and moments of horror within the pages but there is so much more. This novella did not grab me so thoroughly like Mongrels which has the advantage of more pages to expand its message and its hold on the reader but Mapping the Interior is still a worthy addition to Stephen Graham Jones' repertoire of horror with an humanist touch..