Day 80: The Least of My Scars

Like yesterday, I thought I would continue to look back at books I read in the past and, drawing on my memory, post a short review. Today, I remember a book from Stephen Graham Jones.

I read Stephen Graham Jones’ The Least of My Scars back in November of 2015, and it is definitely a book that has stayed in my brain for the nearly ten years since I read it. Jones reputation as a writer, and he has written A LOT — at least 25 books, is as a horror writer. This book might be described as a man alone in a room story, sort of like some of Paul Schrader’s movies Taxi Driver or First Reformed. The narrator and main character, William Colton Hughes, spends all his time in his apartment — he literally never leaves. You come to understand, rather quickly, that Hughes waits for people to knock on his door so he can kill them. Much of Jones’ book is the character’s interior thoughts which leads one to wonder how reliable or unreliable the narrator is. 

Unlike more gore and action filled horror tales, The Least of My Scars is a psychological horror tale. I am reminded of the 1986 movie, Henry: Portraint of a Serial Killer which, back in the day, scared many people (and film distributors) because it had the audience focus on the mind of a killer rather than their acts. That movie, along with The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover and Tie Me Up, TIe Me Down were the first movies to use the new NC-17 rating to indicate that they were for adults but not pornographic. Back to Jones’ book. The book is less than 200 pages long and is not for everyone; many people on Goodreads complain that they were not sure what was actually happening in the book. But, if you appreciate the possibility of an unreliable narrator and a story that is more about psychology than action, then The Least of My Scars might be for you.