Another hit out of the park for SGJ. This was a quick read, shorter than most of his other novels, but was not lacking in substance at all. It was creepy and psychological. It had me on the edge of my seat trying to determine if the narrator was reliable. A house that has hidden rooms that have yet to be explored is straight out of my nightmares. The innocent little brother… ugh. It was so emotional. As always, SGJ weaves in Native American folklore and history into a modern story - giving the novel added breath and adding to the dark and spooky vibes.

If you like a good ghost story, told around the fire circle at a Native American reservation, this is for you.

Things I like: The vibes. The setting. The mood. The characters. The plot.
Things I didn’t like: SGJ has a cadence and a writing style that takes some getting used to. It’s almost poetic, which can be tricky for some.

This novella fills you up with its breath until it's all you can see, hear, taste, smell, and think about. If The Buffalo Hunter Hunter is Jones' masterpiece, then Mapping the Interior sets the stage. A brilliant, haunting read.

“The next time I woke, it was because something had woke me, I knew. It’s a different kind of waking up when there’s still the ghost of a sound in the small bones of your ear.”

Twelve year old Junior thinks he sees the ghost of his dead father one night, and becomes convinced his father is haunting the home where he, his mother, and younger brother live. This is a re-release of a story that came out in 2017 and I highly enjoyed diving into Jones’s backlist. This is a strange and surreal haunted house story with a clear narration style that perfectly fits our protagonist. Another haunting tale from Stephen Graham Jones. This novella is short but its small page count is packed with raw emotion and chilling imagery.

Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC!

This was originally published in 2017, I read it as an ARC for its republication in 2025, I do not know if any of the story has changed.

This is first and foremost a grief horror. If that's not your jam or it isnt the time for you then please pick up another SGJ book.

As you might expect if you're an SGJ fan, this was beautifully written. I've never been able to place what it is exactly about Stephen Graham Jones style that makes it so identifiably his, but I've found that his writing feels like a wave, it just grabs you and carries you along somehow.

This story is from the perspective of a 12 year old Indian boy who lost his father and has built him in to this idol. He's struggling to become the man of the house, protecting his disabled younger brother from bullies and trying to bring his dad back from the dead.

There were places where mapping the interior read and felt like a fever dream and places where I did question whether the narrator really was a 12 year old. Without spoilers, that does make sense at the end.

I didn't love the way that Junior's little brother was treated or what happened to him in the end. It was extraordinarily sad and made me feel like dino's trust was broken and he didn't even know it. I think as someone with younger siblings, that part of the storyline hit really hard.

If you're a fan of SGJ or enjoyed Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce then you'll enjoy this.

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones has been around for a while, but is getting rereleased later this month. It’s a haunted house type story and is pretty short so I won’t say too much about it. This is one of those books that you don’t so much as enjoy given the content, but you absolutely respect. It’s all at once heartfelt, incredibly sad, disturbing, and unsettling. I read it in one sitting which is a rare thing for me.

This new edition will be out April 29th. Thank you to @netgalley and @tornightfire for an ARC.

This is a dark and beautiful story about the love of family, especially that of siblings, with a very eerie horror aspect.

This is a very short read, but Stephen Graham Jones has a way of still giving you everything you need. Nothing seems unfinished. The writing is as lyrical as ever.

The idea of a place that is part of and not part of this world at the same time terrifies me. You take something broken, put it in and it comes back fixed. There is no explanation needed for our protagonist. He has the brazenness of youthful certainty. He is the narrator and he is telling us the story. I found an odd sort of comfort in that.

I loved this and would definitely recommend it!

"You can leave the reservation, but your income level will still land you in a reservation house, won't it?"

After the death of his father, Junior, his little brother Dino, and their mom have left the reservation. They've moved into a small rented modular home.

Junior is a sleepwalker, and Dino has some learning disabilities that attract bullies, but Junior protects him as best he can.

"I was twelve the first time I saw my dead father cross from the kitchen doorway to the hall that led back to the utility room."

Mapping the Interior is a coming-of-age tale with a touch of grief and a generous serving of terror. When Junior first spots what he believes is his dead father, he takes it as a favorable sign of healing for his family. I was emotionally invested in that hope as well. I read this novella in one sitting because there was no way I was going to be able to function without knowing how Junior's dad died and whether this manifestation was good or evil. After racing through to the end, I was sorry that it was over. That's how much I was enjoying it.

My thanks to Tor Nightfire for the paperback.

Stephen Graham Jones has quickly establishing himself as one of the major players in the horror world. His Indian Lake Trilogy is just about the final word on the slasher as a form, while also operating as a kind of meta-criticism cum fanboy love letter as well, all while delivering a character for the ages, and his upcoming Buffalo Hunter Hunter is poised to be the book of the year (see review here).

But as is often the case, the sudden explosion is not quite so sudden at all. Graham Jones had been putting out work for years before appearing to emerge fully formed with his breakout hit The Only Good Indians. And what’s better than discovering a favorite artist has a big back catalogue to explore?

And now Tor Nightfire is rereleasing Mapping the Interior, Graham Jones’s 2017 short novel, giving us all a chance to dig in.

Mapping the Interior beautifully captures the claustrophobic anxiety of adolescence, as Junior, a fifteen year old native kid, tries to come to terms with his father’s death, which happened when he was a small child. Dad is now a faint memory, but then, one night, he’s there, standing in the house, dressed in full Fancy Dance regalia. Here and gone again.

What starts as a fairly standard-seeming ghost story soon shifts into something much more troubling and complex. Junior’s brother, Dino is having trouble in school, and it appears he may be losing ever more cognitive function, and Junior believes there may be a connection between these two events. Junior is soon torn between concern for his brother and a deep-seated need to connect to his absent father.

Suffice it to say that things get very weird and very bloody, as Dad become more and more real and more and more malevolent.

As is his his M.O., Graham Jones makes up his own rules, creating a unique mythology for this particular brand of haunting that is viscerally unsettling, bearing some resemblance to the best of The X-Files monster-of-the-week creatures.

But the monsters aren’t really the focus in Mapping the Interior. Instead, it’s very much a coming-of-age story, with everything–the haunting, the violence, the totemic childhood items, even the house itself–taking on a kind of allegorical weight. This is a story about a boy on the brink of adulthood, searching for answers about his absent father, grappling with what feels like some capital F sense of Fate, figured here as a kind of compulsion to repeat generational cycles. Junior is testing out what adulthood means, specifically adult masculinity, and time after time, the answer seems to be violent and destructive.

It looks like Junior might have found a way out of this cycle, but Graham Jones is well adept at offering up hope only to punch us straight in the heart.

In the end, Mapping the Interior is beautiful and harrowing, a bloody bit of grief horror that is absolutely distinctive. A must-read for even casual fans of the author.

Thank you netgalley and Tor for the advanced copy. This was originally published in 2017 and it's getting an updated version. I would assume since this a re-release with an arc that something has changed from the original. This makes me curious and I will be getting the original version to compare.
I loved this grief horror story of Junior and his family being haunted by his father. I loved how Junior grew and began to understand things throughout this short novella.
This is an easy read that's filled with love and grief, worry and anxiousness. I absolutely love everything I have read by Stephen Graham-Jones and this one was no different.

A story about love, grief, family, and if our destiny is sealed the moment we are born into our family. A young boy thinks he sees a figure who reminds him of his long gone father, who died mysteriously years prior.

This is an emotionally charged story with supernatural elements intertwined. Stephen Graham Jones has a way of writing that honestly I’m still getting used to, but I have to say I enjoy it nonetheless. My first experience reading his work was The Only Good Indians, and at first I didn’t know what to think about it but I find myself thinking about that book often and I feel like that means it gets some praise for sure. I’ve always been a sucker for grief horror, and I can see this being just that. A bit of grief horror that’s also tied into a sort of coming of age tale. The author does a great job getting you into the mind of the main young character, and by the end I felt for him.

I think this is a quick read that people can enjoy and really sit and think about!

A beautiful, haunting story that packs an emotional punch alongside truly terrifying imagery. What starts off as a sweet longing for a dead parent turns into something much more sinister. It explores how grief can not just change us but warp us into the very monsters we once fought.

A short horror story about a boy's struggle with grief. Jones has a very specific style of writing, it's almost conversational. It makes his characters seem more like real people. I love this style but I have a hard time physically reading it. A novella is much easier for me to get through. This was the right amount of not knowing what's going on and getting answers. The epilogue with the time jump was actually a good addition. Many times I find those sorts of epilogues to be unnecessary but this one wasn't to tie up all the loose ends, it kind of left you hanging a bit. But in a good way.

Book Review Mapping The Interior by Stephen Graham Jones

Publication Date: April 29/25

Walking through his house one night 12 year old Junior sees his dead father walking through the house. His father died when he was young, and he has few memories of him. He is determined to make contact with his father and becomes convinced that he has returned to help them with his younger brother, Dino, who has developmental disabilities.

Although initially excited by the prospect of his father’s return he soon discovers that his father’s return is not the blessing he thought. Life altering choices have to be made if he wants to save his remaining family.

This novella is a heartfelt exploration of a son’s grief and his efforts to be the “man of the family” and protect his younger brother from both the real and supernatural world. SGJ continues to write tales that horrify you and scare you but keep you glued to the pages. A story about grief, family and what lengths you are willing to go to to protect them.

This story was equal parts fascinating, terrifying and creepy. The disquiet as the story progressed was palpable, creating increasing tension before the reader understood where the story was veering. Filled with unexpected twists this story keeps you on your toes until the end.

Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for the early copy of this book and the opportunity to provide honest feedback.

Mapping the Interior is my introduction to Stephen Graham Jones's work. The story is short, odd, and full of Native American mythologies and beliefs that are introduced through the lens of a twelve-year-old protagonist. When Junior's father comes back from the dead, he struggles to explain the phenomenon, grasping at theories only a child would. The mechanics of his father's reappearance is strange, ominous, and unique—a facet that kept me engaged and theorizing 'til the end. Mapping the Interior is a solid novella full of voice, character, and heart.

I recommend this to anyone seeking a quick supernatural read.

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones is a haunting, fluidly written novella that blurs the line between the supernatural and the psychological with striking ease. The story moves like a dream—gripping yet uncertain—mirroring the protagonist’s own disorientation as he searches for meaning in the wake of loss. Jones’s conversational style pulls you in quickly, making the surreal feel intimate and grounded. At its core, this is a story about grief—how it lingers, reshapes reality, and feeds on memory like a parasite. The horror here isn’t about jump scares or gore; it’s about absence, decay, and the painful echoes of family. What makes it so effective is how the emotional weight drives the fear, creating a layered sense of dread that’s as internal as it is external. It’s a coming-of-age tale that’s more about what you lose than what you gain, and it sticks with you because of that.

I found this to be practically unreadable. I read it two weeks ago and can barely remember anything about it. Which is a shame because the premise is great. Unfortunately I really didn't like the prose or the characters or the resolution. In general I thought this was just a missed opportunity.

Mapping the Interior is a re-release from Stephen Graham Jones. This novella was originally published back in 2017 and is now being released in a brand-new paperback. Overall, I thought this was good and found some of the novel to be creepy but I’m not really a fan of grief horror which is what this book is. It also took me some time to get into the writing style which was a little wordy for me. Nevertheless, this novella is original and was able to give me chills in under 150 pages.

𝗠𝗬 𝗥𝗔𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚: ⭐⭐⭐

𝗣𝗘𝗥𝗙𝗘𝗖𝗧 𝗙𝗢𝗥 𝗙𝗔𝗡𝗦 𝗢𝗙
❥ Grief Horror
❥ Novellas
❥ Native American Culture

Creepy and haunting! A quick, easy novella to binge in one night if you want a good scare! I've been meaning to read something by Stephen Graham Jones for a time now, so this was a great intro to his writing.

Mapping the Interior by Stephen Graham Jones is a haunting and deeply atmospheric tale that expertly blends horror with a profound emotional core. Jones’ writing is sharp and evocative, drawing readers into a chilling world that lingers long after the pages end. A gripping, thought-provoking read.

Stephen Graham Jones has such a fascinating writing voice. He can take the strangest and most fantastical stories and write them in the most grounded way. I'm convinced he could a zombie lizard alien story complete with a full magic system and I wouldn't bat an eye at the plausibility of it.

Junior sees his dead dad at 2:49am, and what follows from there is a trek over just a few days to 'map the interior' of the inside (and outside?) of his house, get him to reappear again and again, explore every inch and find out whats in the dark.

This one was so short, and to me almost feverish in its delivery. There's so much and so little going on simultaneously, and maybe it's just me, but I can never tell what is truly real and what's not, and in both cases no matter how fantastical, I'd still believe it to be reality regardless. Not only that, there was even a few things that didn't get addressed that I'm frothing at the mouth for answers about!!

This is one I'll need to reread again and again. Thank you to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for this eARC in exchange for my honest review!