REVIEW OF A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS (2015) BY PAUL TREMBLAY

“On the morning of the exorcism, I stayed home from school.”

    I went into Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts skeptically. Reading the blurb and finding out that it's a book featuring a teenage girl with schizophrenia becoming the star of a reality show about her supposed demonic possession originally turned me away from this book. I have issues with the horror genre creating monsters out of people suffering from neuro-biological disorders. Further stigmatization of those of us with bipolar disorder, depression, DID, obsessive-compulsive disorder, etc. is unethical. That being said I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Unfortunately, I was still able to sleep through the night, but I did spend hours upon hours reading reviews and debating over what actually went on in the Barrett family household.

    As I said, I went into this book skeptically. I was very pleasantly surprised. Disclaimer: Tremblay himself states that this book is to be seen as an example of the Catholic Church blaming schizophrenia on demons and denying the proper treatment for the young girl, Marjorie, in the book. This is not uncommon. In fact there's a whole history of this which I'm going to address in another post. But onto the story.

   A Head Full of Ghosts begins with a frame narrative. Meredith (Merry for short) is a woman whose older sister starred in a reality TV show documenting her possession. Fifteen years after the show Merry is meeting with a nonfiction author who wants to write a book about her family's experience with her sister Marjorie's possession in the public eye. Merry tells the story from the perspective of her eight-year-old self in three parts. During Marjorie's mental spiral pre-exorcism and reality TV, when the documentary makers move into the house to film the show, and post-exorcism and show. Merry and her older sister were very close, and their favorite pass time was making up stories about the characters in Merry's children's books. Marjorie's stories begin getting darker and more disturbing. She then starts to exhibit strange behaviors: watching Merry sleep at night, accusing her father of wanting to molest her, pissing herself, climbing up walls, and complaining about voices in her head.  

    This is all told against the backdrop of the recession in the United States and their father's layoff from his factory job in Massachusetts. Their father is turning to religion to fill the void caused by unemployment. His marriage becomes strained because of this, the mother has no interest in religion at all. He becomes quick-tempered and zealous as Marjorie's condition deteriorates, believing her not to be symptomatic of schizophrenia, but symptomatic of Satan himself. With the family already hanging on by a financial thread, the parents are approached by a documentarian wanting to make a show for the Discovery Channel about Marjorie's possession. The parents, who are about to lose their house in foreclosure, agree.

     I think this book is excellent in its portrayal of the breakdown of the nuclear family. Strained marriage, a child suddenly ill, infighting between parents and siblings, you name it we've got it. In fact, a lot of the horror for me came from the Barrett's marriage which was on the brink of divorce. There's also the fact of Marjorie's unpredictability. Her behavior violently escalates throughout the book. We're faced with it head on, there is no suggestion of what is happening. The violence is forefront for young Merry who is narrating. Merry who is an unreliable narrator. We're not sure what is actually happening or what is being warped through the eyes of an eight year old girl. 

    There's also the element of mass media in this book. The narrative would've had a totally different feel had it not been for the reality TV show being made inside of the house. It makes this a little more real. I mean who among us has not watched reality TV? MTV's Catfish is one of my comfort shows and if they'd made a show like Possessed on TLC or the Discovery Channel I'd have been a frequent viewer. The show brings this narrative into the twenty first century and into our collective cultural consciousness. It also adds to the theme of exploitation in the book. The show is exploiting the ongoing trauma of Marjorie's life to make good television. Tremblay is pretty specific about that in some of the dialogue. Look at this quote from before Marjorie's exorcism.

"Father Wanderly and Barry and the rest of them wanted Merry in the room last time right? So what's the difference? I'm sure they'll want her in there again, anyway. Makes for good TV right?"

    Along with this the book pokes fun at itself through blog posts by a horror blogger. She dissects the show episode by episode and in this way we learn more through her snarky commentary than we may have had the story relied solely upon Merry's narrative. It's a way to laugh at itself while simultaneously pulling huge plot reveals. Was it necessary though? I don't think so. It broke up the narrative in a pleasing way though, giving us multiple lenses to view this story through. 

    There are a few memorable moments but look out for the one in the basement and the one in the sun-room in particular. Those are my favorites. I'm going to continue this review below

“She kept talking and she kept talking. I thought she would never stop. Standing there, I felt the sun pour through the windows, setting and rising on my back. The sunroom had become a sundial measuring the geological age of my psychological torture.”

 IF you haven't read the book yet, don't go any further. This is spoiler central. 

SPOILERS BELOW

    I'm definitely in the this is a book about a girl with a tragic and untreated mental illness. However! I want to jump into the debate everyone seems to have regarding the ending of this book. What if Marjorie is not possessed but actually Merry is the one who is possessed? At the end she complains about the coffee shop being too hot and it becomes ice cold, the heater breaking. The freezing cold surrounding Marjorie was supposed to be symptom of her demon possession. There's also the matter of Marjorie's symptoms only worsening when Merry is around. I can sympathize with people who want this to be a possession novel. Marjorie and Merry's stories may have unlocked some kind of evil who first possessed Marjorie with the intent of getting to her younger sister. I am so so so curious about this but Tremblay has been maddeningly silent about it. 

"After an awkward silence, and Rachel and I say our good-byes again, it's cold enough that my breath is a visible mist."

    Sure Marjorie tells Merry she's simply faking it but what if...she's...not? This book is so good because it throws us around. I can never really be sure about what exactly was going on. It was engrossing, taking elements from many other horror stories (The Yellow Wallpaper, We Have Always Lived in the Castle, The Exoricst, etc.) that lend to a familiar and somewhat comforting atmosphere for those of us who are familiar with the genre, yet upending everything with the massive twist at the end. The annihilation of the family, the frame story of Merry's interview turned confession with the writer, the secretive and snarky blog she keeps, we're all on our toes throughout the book. 

    I knock a star off though for the fact that Tremblay leans into Marjorie's schizophrenia to carry the plot. The exploitation of mental illness is so tiresome when it comes to horror. It's been done to death and more than that it furthers a stigma against the mentally ill that is dangerous. People with schizophrenia die at higher rates at younger ages than most people do. The lead contributing factor is suicide. People with schizophrenia are also much more likely (up to 14x more likely, actually) to be victims of violence. Representations, particularly in the horror genre, of the "escaped mental patient," the "haunted asylum," "the madwoman," are all scary, but paint terror tinged portraits of people dealing with mental illness in a way that is not productive. It's also in my opinion (isn't this all my opinion?) overdone and a cop-out. 

    I do like that Tremblay is a great writer though with a head for what makes a story addictive. The pacing isn't too slow, and he writes female characters much like Riley Sager (in a way that isn't disgusting). Regardless of its depictions of mental illness it's a great and absolutely tragic read about a family in turmoil. Emotional plotlines like this give horror the added dimension that makes me love the genre so much. I def recommend!

RATING: 💛💛💛💛💔

LINKS: 

Articles about A Head Full of Ghosts

NPR Review (JUNE 2015): https://www.npr.org/2015/06/02/408296128/ghosts-is-an-eerie-edgy-tale-of-perception-and-possession

Leslie Lindsay and Paul Tremblay Interview (SEPT 2015): https://leslielindsay.com/tag/a-head-full-of-ghosts/

Articles about possession, mental illness, and exorcisms

Washington Post Article (JULY 2016)- https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/07/01/as-a-psychiatrist-i-diagnose-mental-illness-and-sometimes-demonic-possession/

CNN Article (AUG 2017): https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/04/health/exorcism-doctor/index.html

Atlantic Article (DEC 2018): https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/12/catholic-exorcisms-on-the-rise/573943/

 Rusu, Alexandru. (2016). Demons and Exorcisms in the Roman Catholic Mind-Set: Probing the Western Demonological Mentality. Romanian Journal of Sociology. XXVII. 89-109 : https://www.researchgate.net/publication/303143556_Demons_and_Exorcisms_in_the_Roman_Catholic_Mind-Set_Probing_the_Western_Demonological_Mentality/citation/download

 Schizophrenia Information: 

Schizophrenia Bulletin: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3160236/

Journal of Psychopharmacology: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2951589/

 

ALIKES: 

The Exorcist by William Blatty

The Exorcist dir. by William Friedkin (1973)

The Exorcism of Emily Rose dir. by Scott Derrickson (2005)

The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gillman

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson