Hi Ghouls,
I don’t know what the weather’s like where you are, but here in Scotland it’s been constant wind and rain lately which is perfect weather for getting curled up with a book. I’ve just finished The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones and wow… this one has really stayed with me.
I’ve read two of Stephen’s other works (The Only Good Indians and My Heart Is a Chainsaw, which I read on holiday last year) and, while I know I haven’t read enough of his back catalogue to really justify saying this… I truly think this is his masterpiece.
The novel begins in 2012, when a diary written in 1912 by Lutheran pastor Arthur Beaucarne is discovered hidden within the walls of a building. It’s passed on to his living relative, Etsy Beaucarne a failing academic desperately hoping to secure tenure. She believes transcribing the diary for publication might finally bring her the academic recognition she’s been striving for.
What follows is a story absolutely seeped in true horror. I will say upfront that there’s a lot to unpack here, and the following content warnings very much apply: graphic violence, death, racism, child death, rape, death by suicide, animal cruelty, animal death, and sexual content.
Through a nested narrative structure, we learn about Good Stab, a Pikuni man who finds himself turned into a vampire. As Good Stab tells his story to Arthur in the form of a confession, Arthur initially dismisses it as nothing more than a tall tale. But when a string of brutal murders begins happening outside the city limits, Arthur starts to question whether there may be some truth in his “confessor’s” stories after all.
I won’t give away the ending in case you choose to read it, but needless to say there’s a reason Good Stab has chosen Arthur as the person to confess his crimes to and it will (and should) make you deeply uncomfortable.
There’s nothing light about this book. There’s no happy ending. It’s steeped in, and woven directly into, real history involving the Pikuni (Blackfeet) people and the Marias Massacre. This is a novel about excavating truth and vengeance, even when doing so drags you further and further away from the person you once were.
It’s tragic. It’s gory. And the real horror lies in the fact that these things actually happened. This is genocidal history framed as horror and offers a fresh take on vampire lore which further leans into the loss of identity and ones self.
I’ve seen reviews from readers who found the prose hard to follow and ended up DNF’ing the book, while others said they simply didn’t “get it.” Personally, I think SGJ writes in an oral style which at times it feels like a stream of consciousness and I think that works incredibly well here.
SGJ doesn’t sugarcoat the brutality of the past to make it more palatable for a modern audience. He leans fully into it, and it leaves a mark. This is an incredible novel and one I implore you all to read. It gets 5 out of 5 skulls from me.
I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’ve read this one, so why not comment below.
Stay spooky!
👻SG👻
☽ SpookyGee ☾ 