Obviously the Exorcist is high up there but there are also many nods to lesser-known works and, at the end of the novel, Tremblay actually provides a chapter-by-chapter guide to his references and inspirations.Īnd the novel does make you think. Paul Tremblay has clearly had great fun referencing the canon of horror literature and film. But if you're a fan of the horror genre, I can see that this book would suit you very well indeed. At times, though, I did find the novel a bit, well, uninteresting, and hard to maintain my attention for over 300 pages. On top of that, I'd never have guessed the ending in a million years - always a bonus. The blog was a slightly off note - it felt unnecessary, and written a bit too self-consciously, somehow, for my liking.Īlthough A Head Full of Ghosts didn't convert me to horror as a genre, I must say that it is extremely well-written, and the relationship between the two sisters is imaginatively and cleverly portrayed. Interspersed with this narrative is a present-day blog account that looks back at the reality TV show - presumably a way for Tremblay to offer independent corroboration of the TV show's content, counteracting the inaccuracies in Merry's account (she's an unreliable narrator at best and, even after you've turned the last page, you're still not really sure what's going on in her head). The main narrative is provided by Marjorie's younger sister Merry, now an adult, who describes the events of her childhood to a writer researching a new book.

The standard horror fare may at times have lacked credibility for a sceptic like me, but the way the media invades and destroys people's lives is all too real. But, for me, the real horror was the way a distressed and dysfunctional family can be persuaded to appear in a reality TV show and have their lives turned inside out by an exorcism screened live on television. It was partly the screaming, the erratic behaviour, the plants coming up through the cellar, etc., which made me want to look over my shoulder. So was the novel scary? I must say that I didn't read this book at bedtime. And I was certainly intrigued by the highly original storyline described in the blurb: when Marjorie, a teenage girl, starts behaving erratically, her family can't cope and call in the local priest and, ultimately, a TV crew who start to film a reality show about exorcisms. Or maybe I was interested to see how Paul Tremblay dealt with the schizophrenic behaviour of his teenage protagonist. But A Head full of Ghosts appealed to me, somehow - perhaps I was just curious to read the novel that scared the living hell out of Stephen King. I don't normally go in for horror stories, mainly because I usually can't take them seriously enough to suspend disbelief.

A headful of ghosts