A Head Full of Ghosts

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction / Tremblay, Paul	4-week checkout	Due 05-18-2024

"The lives of the Barretts, a normal suburban New England family, are torn apart when fourteen-year-old Marjorie begins to display signs of acute schizophrenia. To her parents' despair, the doctors are unable to stop Marjorie's bizarre outbursts and subsequent descent into madness. As their home devolves into a house of horrors, they reluctantly turn to a local Catholic priest for help. Father Wanderly suggests an exorcism; he believes the vulnerable teenager is the victim of demonic possession. He also contacts a production company that is eager to document the Barretts plight for a reality television show."--Book jacket.

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A Head Full Of Ghosts submitted by Fevvers - STAR473 on July 2, 2016, 6:04am There are a lot of moving parts to this story, and Tremblay keeps them rather well balanced. It's told from the perspective of a young woman, Merry, whose family went through a terrifying ordeal when she was a child. The question of what might be supernatural and what might be calculated by a very disturbed mind - and any of it aggravated by the actions of other troubled people forced to be party to the disturbing events - this uncertainty looms over the whole book. But there is a definite progression towards clarity as Merry continues to relate the whole complex story to a journalist.

A Head Full Of Ghosts is flat-out creepy and disturbing. The causes for those feelings shift but the reader cannot escape a sense of dread any more than Merry could escape that scary and confusing period in her life. Her older sister demonstrates signs of severe and dangerous mental illness, but certain things also cause the girls' father to believe there is something supernatural and demonic at work. Priests are called in. So too is the crew which proceeds to make a reality television show out of what is happening in the Barrett household. It feels like a strange but inevitable mix.

I look forward to reading more of Paul Tremblay's work. It is very well done and eerie how well he writes the delicate, unbalanced, yet loving relationship between the two very different Barrett sisters.