A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS by Paul Tremblay (2016, William Morrow/Harper Collins)
While A Head Full of Ghosts is an easily read book, the story it tells is a complex weave of interactions within the Barrett family and the family’s interactions with those outside, mainly Father Wanderley and the crew of a reality TV show.
Merry – Meredith – our narrator looks back from the age of 23 on events that happened when she was 8 and her sister, Marjorie, was 14 and going insane. Or being possessed by a demon. Or just being a teenager, a smart, perhaps manipulative teenager, watching her family disintegrate after her father, John, lost his job at the toy factory. Or maybe she’s a combination of these or all of them.
Merry senses the tension building as her father, unable to secure a new job, finds a tenuous solace in his faith, his quest for comfort and guidance alienating their non-believing mother who becomes more distant, even paralyzed by escalating events. Merry hears their whispers, not quite aware what appointments Marjorie is going to, not really sure what a psychiatrist is. Then, one night, screaming draws Merry and her parents to Marjorie’s room where, apparently asleep, Marjorie’s arms and legs are embedded in the wall.
John seeks help from Father Wanderley who believes Marjorie is possessed and acts as liaison with the Catholic Church in discussing Marjorie’s condition. Wanderley contacts a television production company, and economically-strapped John sees potential relief, grasping the opportunity to be the center of a reality TV show, Possession, documenting the days leading to an exorcism.
Throughout the novel Tremblay alludes to other stories of possession, including The Thing (1982, dir. John Carpenter) but especially the most famous of all, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971) and the movie directed by William Friedkin (1973). These allusions are one of the mechanisms by which Tremblay presents the complexity of the situation. Another narrative strategy involves repeatedly raising the question of how much to trust a survivor’s narrative. How much does Merry truly remember, how much is what she relates affected by her nearly life-long immersion in the cultural discussion of a TV show that for a time mesmerized the country, how much is she trying to spare herself from memories of a traumatic period that destroyed her family, how is her perspective affected by guilt?
A third strategy is couching the narrative as a series of dichotomies, the most obvious of which is possession vs. insanity, though not just the demonic possession of Marjorie but, broadening the meaning of the word, the possibility of Merry’s possession by Marjorie and John’s possession by religious fervor. Other dichotomies include middle class ideals and hopes vs. economic reality; expectations of males vs. expectations of females; male-centered religion vs. female independence and intelligence; memory vs. reality; reality vs. reality TV, and implicit in that last a critique of profiting from a family’s misery and fear, stilting their lives with a not-quite scripted set of expectations and at times either unconsciously or consciously pointing desperate people towards extreme behavior in the name of entertainment. Whether or not Marjorie is possessed by a demon, the whole family may be possessed by the demands and processes and schedules of reality TV, which, finally, leads to – and maybe even implicates the reader in – another dichotomy, witnessing vs. voyeurism.
In short, A Head Full of Ghosts is a dark satire of the novel of possession, of religion, focusing on the Catholic Church but not exclusively, and of the invasiveness of mass media. Each of the four sections of the novel start with a blog post by a Karen Brissette critiquing an episode or episodes of Possession, each post deconstructing the storyline and acting, the effects and the focus of the episodes. This could have backfired by becoming a pedantic authorial interjection, but Tremblay weaves the points made into his main narrative which adds depth – and eventually more questions – by scrutinizing the family and its individual members, their motives and the stresses on each. But what makes the story compelling is the voice of Merry, still trying to mend, still broken, the voice of a young woman remembering her eight-year-old self and her assumptions and misunderstandings and hopes and fears and deep abiding love and adoration for her sister, her older, vibrant, imaginative, possibly insane sister.
If you don’t read any other horror novel this year, consider reading this one. It’s more than worth your time and one of those rare novels you may feel the need to reread soon.
At the end of the paperback edition of A Head Full of Ghosts are appendices, one a revision of a previously published essay in the on-line magazine, Nightmare arguing for a certain approach to the horror story, and another suggesting further reading and viewing, most of which I’ve managed to miss except for two I’ve alluded to in past Octobers, The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory and Quatermass and the Pit (1967, also known as Five Million Miles to Earth), both recommendations I heartily second. I was also lucky enough recently to catch up to one of Tremblay’s other recommendations:
Session 9 (2001) -- A crew wins the bid to clean out Danvers State Mental Institution, a huge, rambling building from the 1800s closed fifteen years earlier after a scandal. Each of the cleaners has issues and their issues magnify while in the building. The question is whether their issues just come to the fore all at once, each resonating and strengthening off what the others are going through, or if something in Danvers is playing on each man’s weaknesses. There is reason to believe something infests Danvers stemming from a former inmate who had murdered family members, an inmate with multiple personalities, one of which named Simon frightens the other personalities. Starring Peter Mullan, David Caruso and Josh Lucas, this is one of the best supernatural thrillers I've watched recently (thank you Paul Tremblay). For anyone with an allergy to Caruso post-CSI: Miami he is not the lead, but as when paired with William Patterson or Gary Sinise in the CSI franchise, he acts more and poses less, and his performance as the main character’s friend and partner is strong and effective, showing the character’s anger almost always on boil and ready to spill over at any moment.
That night, standing in Marjorie’s doorway, [...] I saw Marjorie clinging to the wall like a spider. Her circular poster collage, her collection of glossy body parts, was her web, and she hovered over its center. Her arms and legs were spread-eagled, with her hands, wrists, feet, and ankles sunk into the wall as though it were slowly absorbing her. Marjorie squirmed and writhed in place, her feet at least my height above the floor. Dad had to look up at her and he tugged on her sweatshirt, demanding that she wake up and come down off the wall.
– from A Head Full of Ghosts
While A Head Full of Ghosts is an easily read book, the story it tells is a complex weave of interactions within the Barrett family and the family’s interactions with those outside, mainly Father Wanderley and the crew of a reality TV show.
Merry – Meredith – our narrator looks back from the age of 23 on events that happened when she was 8 and her sister, Marjorie, was 14 and going insane. Or being possessed by a demon. Or just being a teenager, a smart, perhaps manipulative teenager, watching her family disintegrate after her father, John, lost his job at the toy factory. Or maybe she’s a combination of these or all of them.
Merry senses the tension building as her father, unable to secure a new job, finds a tenuous solace in his faith, his quest for comfort and guidance alienating their non-believing mother who becomes more distant, even paralyzed by escalating events. Merry hears their whispers, not quite aware what appointments Marjorie is going to, not really sure what a psychiatrist is. Then, one night, screaming draws Merry and her parents to Marjorie’s room where, apparently asleep, Marjorie’s arms and legs are embedded in the wall.
John seeks help from Father Wanderley who believes Marjorie is possessed and acts as liaison with the Catholic Church in discussing Marjorie’s condition. Wanderley contacts a television production company, and economically-strapped John sees potential relief, grasping the opportunity to be the center of a reality TV show, Possession, documenting the days leading to an exorcism.
Throughout the novel Tremblay alludes to other stories of possession, including The Thing (1982, dir. John Carpenter) but especially the most famous of all, The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty (1971) and the movie directed by William Friedkin (1973). These allusions are one of the mechanisms by which Tremblay presents the complexity of the situation. Another narrative strategy involves repeatedly raising the question of how much to trust a survivor’s narrative. How much does Merry truly remember, how much is what she relates affected by her nearly life-long immersion in the cultural discussion of a TV show that for a time mesmerized the country, how much is she trying to spare herself from memories of a traumatic period that destroyed her family, how is her perspective affected by guilt?
A third strategy is couching the narrative as a series of dichotomies, the most obvious of which is possession vs. insanity, though not just the demonic possession of Marjorie but, broadening the meaning of the word, the possibility of Merry’s possession by Marjorie and John’s possession by religious fervor. Other dichotomies include middle class ideals and hopes vs. economic reality; expectations of males vs. expectations of females; male-centered religion vs. female independence and intelligence; memory vs. reality; reality vs. reality TV, and implicit in that last a critique of profiting from a family’s misery and fear, stilting their lives with a not-quite scripted set of expectations and at times either unconsciously or consciously pointing desperate people towards extreme behavior in the name of entertainment. Whether or not Marjorie is possessed by a demon, the whole family may be possessed by the demands and processes and schedules of reality TV, which, finally, leads to – and maybe even implicates the reader in – another dichotomy, witnessing vs. voyeurism.
In short, A Head Full of Ghosts is a dark satire of the novel of possession, of religion, focusing on the Catholic Church but not exclusively, and of the invasiveness of mass media. Each of the four sections of the novel start with a blog post by a Karen Brissette critiquing an episode or episodes of Possession, each post deconstructing the storyline and acting, the effects and the focus of the episodes. This could have backfired by becoming a pedantic authorial interjection, but Tremblay weaves the points made into his main narrative which adds depth – and eventually more questions – by scrutinizing the family and its individual members, their motives and the stresses on each. But what makes the story compelling is the voice of Merry, still trying to mend, still broken, the voice of a young woman remembering her eight-year-old self and her assumptions and misunderstandings and hopes and fears and deep abiding love and adoration for her sister, her older, vibrant, imaginative, possibly insane sister.
If you don’t read any other horror novel this year, consider reading this one. It’s more than worth your time and one of those rare novels you may feel the need to reread soon.
At the end of the paperback edition of A Head Full of Ghosts are appendices, one a revision of a previously published essay in the on-line magazine, Nightmare arguing for a certain approach to the horror story, and another suggesting further reading and viewing, most of which I’ve managed to miss except for two I’ve alluded to in past Octobers, The Cormorant by Stephen Gregory and Quatermass and the Pit (1967, also known as Five Million Miles to Earth), both recommendations I heartily second. I was also lucky enough recently to catch up to one of Tremblay’s other recommendations:
Session 9 (2001) -- A crew wins the bid to clean out Danvers State Mental Institution, a huge, rambling building from the 1800s closed fifteen years earlier after a scandal. Each of the cleaners has issues and their issues magnify while in the building. The question is whether their issues just come to the fore all at once, each resonating and strengthening off what the others are going through, or if something in Danvers is playing on each man’s weaknesses. There is reason to believe something infests Danvers stemming from a former inmate who had murdered family members, an inmate with multiple personalities, one of which named Simon frightens the other personalities. Starring Peter Mullan, David Caruso and Josh Lucas, this is one of the best supernatural thrillers I've watched recently (thank you Paul Tremblay). For anyone with an allergy to Caruso post-CSI: Miami he is not the lead, but as when paired with William Patterson or Gary Sinise in the CSI franchise, he acts more and poses less, and his performance as the main character’s friend and partner is strong and effective, showing the character’s anger almost always on boil and ready to spill over at any moment.
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