Well we’re in the second week of our spooky era here on A&A and the shivers are starting to (ahem) creep down the spine. Excellent.

I have to admit, this is not my first Stephen Graham Jones story, and actually not even the first time I’ve read Mapping the Interior. According to Goodreads, I originally read this novella back in October of 2021 but never posted a review about it. Looking back at the archive from that time, it’s not particularly hard to see why. I was BUSY.

I had finally released Narmer and The God Beast on Amazon and was trying to talk a little bit about that. I was still deep in my Hugo Era and trying to keep up with everything going on there (I posted reviews of Tracy Deon’s Legendborn, Tochi Onyebuchi’s Riot Baby, and Jordan Ifueko’s Raybearer). And finally, I was trying to push out my own haunted house story for folks subscribing to my newsletter. It ended up being a kind of Steampunk version of Smarthouse which I named Boutilier House.

I’m honestly astonished I had the time to do all of that lol. In any case, I was probably reading a bunch of haunted house stories around that time, trying to get a sense of what had and hadn’t been done before in that space, not unlike the main character of Mapping the Interior, cataloguing the genre from the inside, mapping it out so that I could search it systematically, not for the ghost of my dead father, but for my muse!

Anyway, we’re here to review a novella, not get cute about marketing an old story, so lets get started with that!

Mapping the Interior feels notable for a few reasons. Similar to The Grownup, the story does not open with a description of the house, but with the main character sleep walking. We learn about the house a few pages later, and it also bucks our expectations. It’s modular. At only 1140 square feet (avg in 2025 is 2,200 square feet), it is a far cry from the mansions we’re used to reading about in early Gothic literature, or even the abandoned suburban haunts we see in more modern horror. Also, Jones is Blackfeet Native American and depicts Native American characters within the story.

All of these choices, from the size and character of the house, to the backgrounds of the people living in it, build a picture we’re not used to reading in Haunted House stories. An example of what Wikipedia describes as “. . . Native American Gothic, or Rez Gothic: a niche publishing genre characterized as using fantasy, science fiction, and horror to shed light on racial inequalities . . .” (from the wiki for Stephen Graham Jones)

Mapping the Interior is certainly not the first book to do this, not even in Stephen Graham Jones’ catalog, but it felt representative to me of the power this kind of fiction can have and an important deviation from the classic trappings of a Haunted House story.

But for all the tropes and expectations this novella subverts, it stays true to form in one major element, managing to be both deep and meaningful and a supremely unsettling read (which is what we come to horror for right!).

Part of that feeling of awe and dread the reader experiences — I feel — comes from the perspective the story is told. Our narrator, Junior, is only twelve years old at the time the main part of the story takes place, and there is a type of sureness and certainty in the supernatural that adults just don’t have any longer. And through this perspective we are made to believe what happens is real, we are made to believe in ghosts.

And we’re able to bridge the gap between our own age and a child’s because Junior is simply incredibly well written. Indigo Xix writes:

“. . . this is the kind of child I adore: he is innocent and precocious, noble and self-involved all a the same time. He is, in other words, a real human child, full of the complexities and contradictions that all children have.” – Stephen Graham Jones’s ‘Mapping the Interior – A Review

I could not agree more, or put it any better (hence the quote hahah).

Of course there is also the ghost itself, which walks a perfect tight rope between violent benevolence, and indisputable evil. Through most of the story, the reader is never quite sure just what kind of ghost this is. A helpful spirit? Or a hateful devil?

Also, incredibly (ahem) fleshed out, this ghost just feels like something Jones pulled from a Native American myth or legend. Normally, I know half the fun of a read like this would be tracking down just which legend it came from and just what connections that myth has to the larger culture. Unfortunately, I have a rather shallow knowledge of Native American mythology and am not even sure quite where to start. Even Jones himself isn’t quite sure exactly where this haunt originated from. He tells Paul Semel (of paulsemel.com) that:

“Try as I might, I can’t remember what ghost-stories I might have had in mind when I wrote this. I was watching a lot of Westerns, I recall . . .” – Exclusive Interview: Mapping The Interior Author Stephen Graham Jones

If this is the case, I am perhaps more impressed, since it means that the horrors written on the page are just whatever horrors Jones came up with himself.

Finally, we have the end, which I won’t spoil, but which I would consider a true coda (like in a musical composition). At first, it feels a bit tacked-on, but after some consideration, I feel it is actually perfect because it makes the story NOT perfect. We have a nicely finished story, and then a bit extra which just leaves us a little bit unsettled. I don’t think every story could, or should do this, but I did enjoy this technique here. It just felt right for Mapping the Interior.

Give ‘Mapping The Interior’ a Read?

Absolutely! As a quick but meaningful diversion from the ‘typical’ haunted house story, Mapping the Interior fulfills that need exceedingly well, and as an intro to Native American Gothic, or Rez Gothic, it brings you up to speed in just a short 100-ish pages. I really enjoyed reading from Junior’s perspective, and was able to appreciate just how well this kid is written that his viewpoint alone enables us to really BELIEVE in ghosts, and increasingly fear and dread them as Junior learns to do as the story progresses.

While I couldn’t pick up exactly which myth or legend our haunt comes from, I found myself more impressed as it meant that the author did not have a template from which to draw, but really had to rely on his own creativity and knowledge to keep the reader scared (which I was!). And finally, I enjoyed the ‘coda-like’ nature of the end which left us feeling as unsettled as ever despite getting the ‘good ending’.

That’s all I have for this week! Has anyone read this novella before? Or any other Stephen Graham Jones stories? Which are your favorite? Did you recognize the ghost here from a native myth or legend? Where might we start our search?

Leave your thoughts and feelings in the comments section! I’m looking forward to talking about this one!

See you next time for some more Haunted House adventures! Stay spooky everyone hahah.