A Head Full of Ghosts

Maybe because I'd heard so many good things about it, this book was something of a disappointment. It's an intriguing premise of a book, sort of a scaled-down version of House of Leaves, doing for possession/exorcism what HoL did for haunted houses. (There's even a Navidson reference.)

The story at the center is of a teen, Marjorie, whose erratic behavior leads one of her parents to believe she's possessed and bring in a priest to perform an exorcism. The exorcism becomes the subject of a reality TV program, which makes up another layer of the story. This is all being recounted by Merry, Marjorie's younger sister, as an adult. There's also a blogger whose posts comment on the reality show, who turns out to be adult Merry writing under a pseudonym.

It's an intriguing premise that never quite worked for me. Though the writing style was pretty good, it didn't reach the kind of complexity to story needed. Merry appears to be inspired by Merricat from We Have Always Lived in the Castle– She even poisons her entire family near the end of the story–but her voice never achieves the perfect balance of sinister and innocent, knowing and naive that Jackson achieved. While Tremblay can be complimented for even trying, the failure leaves something of a hole in the emotional heart of the novel.

The blog entries are a particular weak point. Some people hate the Johnny Truant sections of HoL, but at least Johnny felt like a real character. The blogs are written in a quirky, hyperactive style which winds up feeling like the narrative equivalent of the Steve Buscemi “How do you fellow kids?” meme. They also feel superfluous, the analysis they provide not serving to deepen the story but more to lampshade some weaker elements (some pretty direct rips from “The Exorcist”) and flatter or impress the reader (shout-outs to “The Castle of Otranto”, “The Haunting of Hill House” and various other Gothic classics).

The central premise of the title is the notion that stories and ghosts are analogous, possible stand-ins for each other, an interesting idea the novel never quite lives up to.