Review: I Was a Teenage Slasher

I Was a Teenage Slasher by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Gave up around page 150. Did not expect supernatural events to be such a big part of the story, which was offputting. I liked the raw, rambling, digressing, diary style of writing, like the protagonist was trying to tell too many stories at once, his chaotic voice not being able to fit into the linear flow of narration, jumping topics time and space at will. The action (murder) sequences felt emoionless, one does not even register they witnessed a brutal end to a fictional life should one's attention waver a bit.

I would have read the book stripped of the slasher and supernatural elements, it would just have been an interesting memoir of a man facing a middle age crisis reminiscing about growing up in a small town in West Texas in 1989 (which the author feels the need to remind us at least 1989 times).

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