REVIEW : NIGHT OF THE MANNEQUINS / STEPHEN GRAHAM JONES
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There is no shortage of horror fiction rooted in the brooding, transitional moments of teenage life. For obvious reason: teenagers, with their hormones and their emotions and their sometimes limited intelligence, make a lot of bad decisions. And horror, well, horror is a genre predicated on terrible, terrible decisions. A kid opens the wrong door, a teen falls in love with the wrong drifter, a certain box is opened when it really shouldn't have been opened - you get the point. Teens do dumb shit, and the swirling chaos of their emotional interiors lends itself to rationalizing this dumb shit and rationalization lends itself to continued idiocy which just lends itself to more horror.
Stephen Graham Jones - a prolific writer who has just of late stepped into the horror set's spotlight - clearly understands the potential of the teenage mind. His newest book, Night of the Mannequins, roils in disordered teenage grey matter, using the unstable and overwhelming change - physically, mentally, socially - inherent to the age-group as a leaping off point for a twisted exploration of youthful transition. A twisted exploration featuring a department store mannequin, fondly named "Manny" and a whole lot of murder.
Sawyer, Tim, JR, Danielle and Shanna are a group of kids we all know - tight since elementary school, their bonds fraying as hormones and shifting emotions start to dictate their decisions and affect their concept of responsibility. It starts with a prank - a beloved mannequin is dressed and placed in a theater - for (arguably) vague reasons. But when the prank goes wrong the mannequin just stands up and walks out of the theater. And then there's a murder and then the questionable choices start to pile up as the narrator, Sawyer, tries to solve the problem of a potentially "living" mannequin by any means necessary.
It isn't just bad choices that start to pile up either. Night of the Mannequins may be slim in thickness (a tightly knotted 173-pages) but Jones doesn't shy away from layering genre on top of genre on top of genre - is it a slasher novel? a creepy monster book? a superhero books? a book about a killer mannequin - until Night of the Mannequins lists uncomfortably under the sheer weight of it all. Ditto to plot points which Jones tosses on to the page just long enough for the reader to lightly absorb before barreling over them, their impact lost in the dust.
Part of me could be convinced the overabundance of genre and plot and back story in Night of the Mannequins could be intentional. Jones is a keen writer of voice and he imbues Sawyer with the sort of maddening rationalization only a kid struggling through adolescences could muster. Sawyer's narration ping-pongs back and forth through time and tone, a laser accurate representation of the inside of a fourteen year old's brain as the pituitary gland starts pumping its juice. When Sawyer starts making some seriously questionable choices, you can almost convince yourself right along with him he's doing at least some pitch-black version of the right thing. You can hear the sadness in his increasingly untrustworthy narration as he clings to what was and the decisions it drives him towards are almost believable. You really want to believe that the gaping holes in the narrative and the sudden twists and reveals are intentionally murky, just a part of that fucked-up kid brain trying to muddle through reality.
In the end though, it's almost like Jones is subsumed by the madness of the main character, like his effort to make the book feel appropriately chaotic blinds him to the lacking character development and overabundance of glaringly unresolved plot points. Jones is clearly a talented (and prolific writer) but Night of the Mannequins feels rushed, unfinished even, a book not fully matured
Stephen Graham Jones Night of the Mannequins is available from Tordotcom now.
N. Binford is a reader and reviewer of books. As you can tell.
