Book Review: "The Buffalo Hunter Hunter" by Stephen Graham Jones

I've encountered Stephen Graham Jones quite a bit over the course of the last few years. The anthology When Things Get Dark in which several horror writers attempt to write in the style of Shirley Jackson was perhaps one of my personal favourites he has been involved with. The Only Good Indians was a pretty good one and I have yet to read a couple that I really want to including: Don't Fear the Reaper and The Ones Who Got Away. Stephen Graham Jones is perhaps one of the most intriguing voices in contemporary horror because of his mix of folk, cultural horror and suspense. Now, on to the review for The Buffalo Hunter Hunter...

The book opens with a modern woman discovering and beginning to read an old diary passed down from one of her ancestors. As she opens its pages, the narrative shifts into the voice of the diary’s author: a Lutheran priest serving a small flock in rural Montana during the late 19th century. This framing reminds the reader that the story we are about to encounter is mediated, filtered through the priest’s observations and handwriting. Almost from the beginning we have a foreboding and a darkness. It's like something washes over you and you know that what you're about to read is bleak, dark and terrifying. I liked the immediacy of the atmosphere, it felt like a very fast sunset. We are thrown into the midst of the horrific darkness almost from the outset.

One Sunday, a stranger interrupts the priest’s modest service. He is a Native American man named Good Stab, strangely dressed in priestly robes and sunglasses he is a bizarre and disorienting figure. Despite his unsettling presence, he keeps returning, eventually demanding the rite of confession. His persistence unnerves the small congregation, but the priest feels both duty-bound and morbidly fascinated. I'm not going to lie, this really fascinated me as well because I'm quite into how folk horror blends with the forcefulness of religion. The only thing I will say about this book is that the names got quite confusing as the book went on. But that's for another time.

Good Stab’s confession is not a single moment but a sprawling narrative told over weeks, recorded carefully by the priest in his diary. His English is fractured and heavily inflected by his own language. Plants, animals, and people are renamed through his cultural lens so that: “dirty-faces,” “black-horns,” and other terms must be interpreted slowly by both the priest and the reader. The alien nature of his speech draws us deeper into his worldview. We start to see him as not only a strange figure but as a possible predator as well. The further in we go, the more sure we become that yes, this man is a vampire. I think that at this point, it becomes a bit less like a folk horror novel but more like what would happen if the Coen Brothers had directed From Dusk Till Dawn instead of Tarantino. I'm not complaining, but I definitely would have liked more concentration on the atmosphere and the criticism of organised religion.

It becomes increasingly more violent and bleak and horrifying and we are taken through moments of cultural pain and darkness. I'm not saying that there should have been more of a juxtaposition between light and dark, but perhaps this book needs something more than the constant bleating nothingness which it holds (and quite well, might I add). The tone almost becomes droning and it loses itself to sameness eventually. Be that as it may, it is still an interesting read.

All in all, though I enjoyed this book there was definitely room for improvement. I have often enjoyed Stephen Graham Jones' writing style because of how different he is to others of the same era - he is definitely an innovative author. However, there is something missing in this book for me. At the beginning, it starts quite strong but then, as you get into the story, it doesn't really hold itself up to the same quality. I will still be reading Stephen Graham Jones' other books but I don't think that this one was really for me. If you like Tarantino films though, I think you might be in luck.