A Head Full Of Ghosts (2014) by Paul Tremblay

A Head Full Of Ghosts (2014) by Paul Tremblay: A Head Full Of Ghosts feels like part of a fictional conversation that began with Ray Russell's The Case Against Satan (1962) and continued through William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist (1971) and on into all those found-footage possession and ghostly infestation movies in the Paranormal Activity, Insidious, and Conjuring franchises. 

It's a superior novel that deals with its own possession case even as it also interrogates and discusses how possession cases have been represented in various media, whether presented fictionally or as "based on a true story." People don't remember now that The Exorcist itself was repeatedly framed by Blatty and the film-makers as being inspired by a "true story" of possession.

Like Great Expectations or To Kill A Mockingbird, A Head Full Of Ghosts is a retrospective narrative. 23-year-old Meredith "Merry" Barrett tells the "untold story" of her 14-year-old sister Marjorie's possession to a writer working on a book about that possession, a possession which occurred 15 years earlier when Merry was 8. 

Tremblay's first bit of play here is to have the present-day of the novel be in "our" future, with the events of the past apparently occurring some time around 2014. He clearly wanted this possession to occur in "our" media world of the Internet, Twitter, YouTube, cell phones, and so on, and so forth. He does not invest "the future" with any flying cars or space colonies, so don't get too excited about that "future retrospective."

But wait, there's more! Posts from a blogger named Karen Brissette are interpolated into Merry's narrative. Brissette synopsizes and analyzes the possession, or more accurately, The Possession. That would be the six-episode reality series that made Marjorie and the rest of the Barretts a five-week media wonder. 

Among other things, Brissette's blog evaluates The Possession as a narrative structured around father John's economic and social "failure" as he's a white, middle-class man who's been recently put out of work by downsizing and who, in his woes, has returned to a fervent, retrograde Roman Catholicism to explain Marjorie's condition which, as Merry's retelling begins, has been diagnosed as some form of mental illness -- perhaps incipient schizophrenia.

Sarah Barrett, still holding down a job, doesn't believe any of the religious crap her husband increasingly extols. But she's also rapidly being exhausted by being the sole breadwinner in the family while also trying to deal with the time and mental demands of whatever the Hell is making Marjorie's life miserable.

Got all that?

So as A Head Full Of Ghosts writes its own narrative of demonic possession, it also evaluates many of the narratives of possession Pop Culture has dropped on us over the years. And it evaluates the media. And religious faith, and religious mania. All while Tremblay creates convincing, complex characters -- especially with Merry and Marjorie. 

There are several major interpretations of what "really" happened offered by the novel, but they are intertwined and not necessarily mutually exclusive of one another. Marjorie may really be possessed. Marjorie may be mentally ill. John Barrett may be possessed. John may be mentally ill. Merry may be possessed. Merry may be mentally ill.

At the very least, even Merry isn't entirely certain of the truthfulness of all her memories during that traumatic five weeks. And she's also aware that certain things remain unexplained or unsolved. The ambiguity Tremblay creates actually increases the horror of the situation. The Exorcist offered proof that there really was a demon at work inside Regan's head. A Head Full Of Ghosts offers no such certainty. Or does it?

The recent HBO adaptation of Gillian Flynn's 2006 novel Sharp Objects seems to have brought the generally lamentable fictional trope of the evil child/ teenager back into prominence, as seen in Flynn's book and in novels like Lionel Shriver's ludicrous, over-praised We Need To Talk About Kevin. Of course, The Exorcist's Regan is a forerunner of the mysteriously evil child/teen. So, too, the potentially possessed in The Case Against Satan. And on to the army of demon-haunted or demon-following or demon-possessed children in the Insidious movies and so on, and so forth. 

However, Tremblay's Marjorie is a believable, sympathetic character whose ultimate spiritual and moral states are haunting and, possibly, left to the reader to decide upon. Merry, in her 23-year-old self remembering her 8-year-old self, is also a believable creation whose memories may or may not be believed. This is adult horror in the sense that it doesn't cheap out with a melodramatic teen monster collecting the teeth of her victims in a doll house. The ending chills the reader, and then chills the reader just a bit more. Highly recommended.