JJ Lee rings in the spooky season by recommending “Leave Our Bones Where They Lay” on CBC’s The Next Chapter

JJ Lee is a writer, art critic, fashion columnist and former CBC Radio host.

Lee spoke with Antonio Michael Downing on The Next Chapter to recommend one horror book and one that he described as “horror-adjacent.”

Lee’s first recommendation was Leave our Bones Where They Lay by Aviaq Johnston.

“It’s a really interesting novel,” he said, and called it a cross between a novel and a short story collection.

In the book, an old hunter called Jupi encounters a supernatural being called Kipik at a hunting site five times a year to tell it a story to keep it from doing something unthinkable to the community.

Alongside telling stories to appease Kipik, Jupi is searching for a successor because he is aging quickly but his own sons are not able to take on the task.

Lee said one of the most amazing things about the book is that alongside traditional mythological beings of the culture, “there are things that I see as Northern Futurism or Arctic Futurism or Inuit Futurism.”

There’s this one great story, Lee noted, that’s magical realist but there’s components in it, elements or hints of the way the city runs and the government runs, that suggest a kind of futurism for the North.

“It’s really exciting that it’s serving as a catch-all for all these new visions and intriguing speculative exercises, so that’s the excuse for the work, so holding it all together is this strange supernatural relationship,” said Lee.

“If you’re a person interested in Indigenous writing and want to understand the role of horror or the supernatural in this kind of writing, this is a great pathway, entryway or gateway into the world of Indigenous horror.”

In addition to Leave Our Bones Where They Lay, Johnston is the author of many children’s and YA books, including Those Who Run In The Sky, What’s My Superpower, and several written in Inuktut. Those Who Run In The Sky was awarded the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award for English Prose. Her writing has also been shortlisted for and won Governor General’s Awards at various times.

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