Chalk Explores the Surreal Horror of Adolescence

Andrew Waggoner and his fellow losers spend most of their high school days just trying to slip past unnoticed, particularly by the malevolent gaze of Drake and his gang of bullies. Mostly, Andrew succeeds, but on the night of the Halloween dance, Drake drags him into the woods and does something terrible and unthinkable to him, an act that mutilates Andrew physically and mentally. Fortunately for Andrew, on the same night he drew the attention of something else, something old and magical and dangerous, something that lends him a new version of himself— one that is confident, cocky, and healed— to exact revenge. Unfortunately, the double (dubbed “Waggoner” by Andrew) has dark designs of his own, violent plans that go well beyond retribution, and might even threaten the world. Andrew is forced to ask himself how far he’s willing to go to make himself whole again.
Chalk makes one thing abundantly clear: Paul Cornell understands pain and trauma. The plot follows Andrew’s attempts to move on from his horrific mutilation, and everything else—from the violent supernatural revenge enacted on his tormentors to his attempts to use writing as a coping mechanism—spirals out from that dark center. Even his “evil twin” mocking attempts to manipulate Andrew—”You do want to be healed, don’t you?”—are a fantastical representation of the real phenomena of traumatic disassociation—the desire to just make the pain stop, and for everything to be all right again. Waggoner’s stated goal is even to “bring everything back to when things were good.” It would be easy for Andrew to be the villain of a book like this, a pathetic character who summons forces beyond his control in a misguided bid for vengeance. Instead, Cornell treats him with sympathy, examining the way a traumatic event reshapes Andrew’s world, building him into a fully three-dimensional character who is, if not heroic, then, at least, painfully human  Despite the trappings of the supernatural, it’s a stark, realistic depiction of pain and abuse, and its raw emotional qualities only deepen the narrative.

The systems of magic in this world are treated with similar care, making the fantastical elements almost as compelling as Andrew’s interior journey. Those who use magic do so with a sort of adolescent belief their actions affect the universe in a very real way—be it asking an ancient chalk drawing to enact vengeance on bullies, using sigils and rituals to bring the back to life, or even dancing to pop music as a means to tell the future. In its own way, it also mirrors a method of coping: the compulsive idea that finding significance in events or engaging in certain rituals will cause the surrounding chaos to somehow make sense, that seemingly mundane actions can reorder the universe, remake it into something better.
Paul Cornell has crafted a story at once terrifyingly surreal and utterly grounded in emotional truth. It’s dark, but the darkness is married to that real and unsettling period of painful adolescence everyone experiences in one form or another, creating something instantly relatable. Most importantly, it leaves the off with a message of hope that will hopefully linger alongside the terrifying imagery: “You will eventually get through this. You have to.” This is a powerful book,and an important one.
Chalk is available March 21.