Reviews

Below are real quotes from the Home Alone novelizations. We’re not kidding, you can fact-check. — Ed.

So we’re all on the same page here, right? We’ve all been in this situation? You’re on a stroll, you see a moldy box of books on the side of the road, and you have yourself a rummage, yeah? Usually the box is full of pre-highlighted textbooks about torts and those supermarket paperbacks where the cover artwork sinisterly depicts, like, a single stiletto heel, dangling over a silver platter serving up a wedding ring with a side of recently-shot handgun. But sometimes one can find a real piece of literature in this urine-soaked excuse for a Barnes and Noble.

Sometimes maybe two.

And, in my case, sometimes even 2: Lost in New York.

That’s right, my latest side-of-the-road finds were the junior novelizations of both Home Alone and its sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

I was eager to see how the authors handled reinterpreting such weighty source material. I soon found that the written-out descriptions of everyone’s favorite booby-trap scenes, rendered so cartoonish and light hearted in the family holiday films, feature more harrowing grisly violence and pitch black malevolence than an uncatered prison race riot.

The following, in no particular order, are direct excerpts from both of these books. Please read them as though they’re from the first draft of a continuation of the Saw franchise, or from the point of view of someone live-tweeting a snuff film.

Read the explicit torture porn of the Home Alone books. »