A Head Full of Ghosts: A Novel

by Paul Tremblay

Paperback, 2016

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Genres

Horror

All Topics

Fiction

Collections

Read, gave away-read, ARC

Publication

William Morrow Paperbacks (2016), Edition: Reprint, 320 pages

Description

Fiction. Horror. Thriller. HTML: WINNER OF THE 2015 BRAM STOKER AWARD FOR SUPERIOR ACHIEVEMENT IN A NOVEL A chilling thriller that brilliantly blends psychological suspense and supernatural horror, reminiscent of Stephen King's The Shining, Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House, and William Peter Blatty's The Exorcist. 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 descent into madness. As their stable 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. With John, Marjorie's father, out of work for more than a year and the medical bills looming, the family agrees to be filmed, and soon find themselves the unwitting stars of The Possession, a hit reality television show. When events in the Barrett household explode in tragedy, the show and the shocking incidents it captures become the stuff of urban legend. Fifteen years later, a bestselling writer interviews Marjorie's younger sister, Merry. As she recalls those long ago events that took place when she was just eight years old, long-buried secrets and painful memories that clash with what was broadcast on television begin to surface�??and a mind-bending tale of psychological horror is unleashed, raising vexing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.… (more)

Media reviews

University of Adelaide

Perhaps the most confronting thing about A Head Full of Ghosts is how it interrogates the fine line between what we think of as possession and what is an outward display of severe mental illness. It’s ambiguous which is the case here, but the predatory nature of involving a reality TV show, as

well as everyone making Marjorie’s illness about themselves, shows a far more realistic and unsettling horror than just spinning heads.... A Head Full of Ghosts starts a little slow, and the perspective of an eight-year-old may take a little bit to get used to, but if you pick up this book, stick with it. Tremblay’s novel is a slow boil towards a tragic end, but so much of the horror lies in the journey along the way, not just a climactic jump scare. In many ways, it feels like every possession story in the 20th century has led up to this book.

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The Guardian

Imagine a literary horror novel that riffs on one of the best and creepiest short stories out there, Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s The Yellow Wall-Paper: “It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please!” Then throw in elements of every tale of possession you’ve

read or seen, from Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House to William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist, and you’ll end up with Paul Tremblay’s A Head Full of Ghosts, one of the most frightening books I’ve read this, or any, year....Despite the skill with which Tremblay wields his demons, real or otherwise, whether or not Marjorie is actually possessed ends up not being the point of A Head Full of Ghosts. None of our narrators here, adult or child Merry (a brilliantly-realised eight-year-old girl), or the blogger, who has secrets of her own, are remotely reliable, and Tremblay is elegantly, carefully ambiguous about the situation. But wherever it comes from, there’s real evil at the heart of this book – and just in time for Halloween.

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National Public Radio (NPR)

...it smartly, viscerally exposes the way mass media, the Internet and pop culture have transformed our experience of that primal human impulse, horror.... Tremblay ambitiously structures the story as a pingponging narrative that coalesces into an unsettling conversation about the truth, or what

the various characters suspect is the truth.... In essence, A Head Full of Ghosts is a book about a book about a TV show about a real-life event whose facts have never been fully established, with running meta-commentary by a blog that bears its own secret agenda. On top of that, it's told by an eyewitness whose reliability is just as problematic.

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Publishers Weekly

Tremblay paints a believable portrait of a family in extremis emotionally as it attempts to cope with the unthinkable, but at the same time he slyly suggests that in a culture where the wall between reality and acting has eroded, even the make believe might seem credible. Whether psychological or

supernatural, this is a work of deviously subtle horror.

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Kirkus Reviews

When a teenager exhibits early signs of schizophrenia, her parents turn not to traditional psychiatry but to a Catholic priest determined to drive out demons and a sleazy reality TV show eager to get the whole fiasco on tape.... As the adult Merry's memories clash with the televised version of

events leading up to the climactic final episode of The Possession—it's not spoiling too much to say that everything that could go wrong does—readers will begin to question if anyone in the house is truly sane. Tremblay expertly ratchets up the suspense until the tension is almost at its breaking point.

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User reviews

LibraryThing member dagon12

Wow. This was an incredible book. I loved the entire thing. I'm going to make extra sure that I do NOT include any spoilers because the book is best consumed without that extra knowledge.

The story involves the Barrett family who are going through some hard times. John, the father, has been out of

work for over a year. The oldest of two daughters has regular doctor visits for her schizophrenia, doctor appointments that are draining the family's resources. Both parents don't agree on the treatment. After finding some peace with a local priest, the family settles on a unique solution.

I know, I'm giving away less than the back cover but trust me, just starting reading the book and you'll be hooked. Tremblay provides depth and dimension to all of his characters. The entire story played through my mind like a movie or a TV series. Tremblay uses a method that makes the whole story so incredibly believable. And then he'll take a chapter and rip apart everything he just did so you don't know what is real and what is not. Those chapters are incredible all by themselves for their depth and analysis. And then, then he slips in one jaw-dropping reveal after another. I literally had to stop and re-read sections after a couple of those moments. And if that wasn't enough, the visuals at the end had me in tears. It fit perfectly but at the same time was so sad to have it revealed. This was easily the best book I've read in a while. Don't miss it.

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LibraryThing member mainrun

I got a lot out of this book. It got into the "can't put down; can't wait to get back to it zone," that I love. It scared me. When 8 year old Merry was describing her bigger than normal doll house, and then sort of casually - like I guess an 8 year old would put it - mentioned her crazy, possibly

possessed by evil entity sister was INSIDE the doll house, covered in a blanket, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FREAKING NIGHT - yeah I got the creeps. The doll house was next to Merry's bed. YIKES. It disappointed me - in a good way. There was one scene that was foreshadowed where Merry's sister, the crazy, possibly possessed by evil entity sister, chased her up the basement stairs one night. When the scene was to be described, I actually went down into my basement at night to read it. I was hoping for some scary action, and was actually seeing similarities between the basement in the book and the one in my house. The scene played out that Merry had lied about what actually happened. Her sister, Meredith, didn't actually spit up dirt and chase her. She hid and was down there but the scene laid the framework for how this book is all about the unreliable narrator. I usually don't like that style, so am impressed the author was able to pull it off.

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LibraryThing member mstrust

The Barretts are a New England family who have been struggling for a over a year, since John lost the job he'd held at a toy factory for nearly twenty years. While mom Sarah works, their finances place the family under such strain that the three older Barretts become volatile.
The story is mostly

narrated by the youngest Barrett, eight year old Merry, who is witness to her fourteen year old sister's transformation from playmate to screaming creature that crawls on the ceiling and terrifies the family. Through Merry's eyes, and she's put front and center to witness nearly everything, we see Marjorie's condition become so extreme that the family gets a reality show, with a director setting up shots and camera operators filming Marjorie's exorcism.

Is Marjorie really possessed or is she suffering from mental illness? Is the family being taken advantage of, or have they done what they had to for the money? And is Dad's religious fervor going to save the family? The reader is kept on unsure footing as we're seeing the family through the eyes of a child, but the Merry we meet 15 years after the family's reality show aired is a blogger who is pretty obsessed with the show that made her family infamous. 4.2 stars

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LibraryThing member KatyBee

"A Head Full of Ghosts" unfolds in disturbing, relentless narration and it undermines your preconceived notions of what horror could and should be in current society. Where are the real dangers? Who are the possessed and who is evil incarnate in the real world? I'm not a big "horror" fan and I

consider this book more than "genre" fiction. It grabbed me and scared me in unexpected ways. I'm grateful to Goodreads Giveways for this paperback; it has an excellent section by Paul Tremblay that connects his story to numerous references and homages to many horror books and movies. It's a good book when you're still thinking about it for days, and this one is a psychological haunter.

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LibraryThing member DougGoodman

One thing I can attest to with this book - it will stick with you. I finished reading it a month ago, and I've waited a while to post a review for two reasons: one, exorcisms scare the hell out of me, and two, I didn't know what to make of it. The first reason is easily explained. Exorcisms freak

me out. Probably has something to do with being Catholic and seeing The Exorcist. That movie kept me up almost as many nights as Poltergeist did.

The second one is harder. I know A Head Full of Ghosts is a good book, that it is well written by Paul Tremblay, and I can attest that it affected me. I remember updating my wife about where I was and what was going on in the book while I read it. The scariest parts for me came early in the book, and I will admit there was a couple of days where I just set the book aside in the NOPE section while I got up the courage to read it again. Read it I did, and I think the book has some problems that deal with the nature of the reality television side of the story and its implications, and I don't like how it ended. For me, it had one too many endings. But it is the end of this book that makes it controversial and makes it stick with you, and if the basis of judging a book as good or bad is whether or not it sticks with you, well, I had a head full of ghosts long after I finished reading this book.

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LibraryThing member sturlington

When she was 8 years old, Merry's big sister Marjorie developed severe schizophrenia -- or perhaps, as their dad came to believe, she was possessed by a demon. Desperate for both money and a cure, Marjorie's parents agreed to let a reality TV show film her exorcism, with disastrous results.

This

horror novel is structured to stretch the bounds of the unreliable narrator, and mess with the reader's mind. At first, the story is related by 24-year-old Meredith, who admits that her memories of what happened are foggy and full of holes. Interspersed with this are blog posts picking apart in detail the filmed (and edited) version of events; the blog turns out to also have been written by Merry under a pseudonym. The bulk of the story is actually seen through the eyes of 8-year-old Merry, who is kept in the dark by the adults around her as to what is happening and is prone to inventing things, as all children are. It is clear early on that Merry's family is no longer with us, so Meredith in her different incarnations is the only one left who can tell the story. Even as she describes Marjorie's increasingly disturbing episodes, we have to question them. Is she really possessed, or is she faking -- she tells Merry at one point she is -- or is the demon making her say that as well? Like most good horror fiction, this book keeps the reader constantly off-kilter.

A Head Full of Ghosts is a treat for the horror fan, as it is packed with references to classic horror fiction and films. It is clear from her blog and bookshelves that adult Merry is a huge horror fan herself and frequently compares her supposedly true story to fiction. [The Exorcist] references are obvious, and the book gleefully plays with the tropes introduced in that book and film, but there are also allusions to [[Lovecraft]], [[Stephen King]], Shirley Jackson's [The Haunting of Hill House],, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "[The Yellow Wallpaper]," and the entire genre of found footage films, among many others.

Tremblay ratchets up the tension relentlessly, until we are compelled to keep reading to find out what happens at the exorcism and what becomes of Merry's family. But--again like a lot of good horror--Tremblay lets readers draw their own conclusions about what actually happened. This ambiguity may frustrate some readers, but Tremblay leaves enough clues to help us come to a satisfying resolution.

The next paragraph is going to be one long spoiler.

While many of the horror allusions in the novel are explicit, one is only implied, but if you have read both books, the connections to [We Have Always Lived in the Castle] are immediate and obvious. Both have younger sisters with "Merry" names and beloved older sisters. In both novels, the families are poisoned at the dinner table and the older sister gets the blame. If Merry in A Head Full of Ghosts is meant to be directly compared to Merricat in We Have Always Lived in the Castle, then it makes sense that Merry is the one who came up with the idea to poison her family, not Marjorie. Marjorie was not meant to eat the poisoned sauce, just as Constance did not eat the poisoned sugar--unfortunately, Marjorie (either knowingly or unknowingly) did, leading to a different and unplanned outcome. Remember, Merry is our only narrator, and we can't really trust anything she says. I'm not denying that Marjorie really was mentally ill, which set all of the events in motion, but was Merry crazy too or was she the one who was actually possessed by evil? Maybe a little of both, but the cold that creeps in at the end leads me to believe that, despite the obvious meddling by the film crew in the exorcism scene, there is indeed a supernatural element to this story.

It would be lots of fun to reread this book and look for clues as to whether my conclusions are correct. Tremblay's clever ambiguous reading lets every reader bring their own interpretation to it. This was a fun and compelling read, and a terrific addition to, as well as commentary on, the horror genre.

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LibraryThing member London_StJ

TL;DR: This novel is a clumsy appropriation of much better horror novels; time would be much better spent reading "We Have Always Lived in the Castle" by Shirley Jackson, and the other novels thoughtfully recommended above.

Full thoughts: My initial rating of Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts

was much higher, hovering around three-to-four stars, as the narrative developed. The book is told from the point-of-view of Merry at ages twenty-three (present) and eight (time of events), as she relates the events of her family's involvement with a reality television show centered on her sister's supposed possession and exorcism. Fourteen-year-old Marjorie is (most likely) a schizophrenic suffering a psychotic break-down, but when her doctor is unable to initiate easy improvement her fanatical father turns to a Father Waverly, who convinces the family not only to seek an exorcism, but to agree to a reality television special with the Discovery Channel as an answer to their financial hardships.

The book is largely self-referential and self-reflective, bringing critical attention to tropes common to contemporary horror and drawing strong parallels to popular horror texts, even as it uses the same tropes and borrows the same plots and details. In the first, this is successful, as it leads the audience to become horrified not by the supposed "possession," but the cultural machines that lead a fourteen-year-old girl to feign a possession, and her parents to agree to film crews exploiting her with untold ramifications for financial gain. Marjorie-as-actress provides interesting jump-scares, but it's young Merry's relationship with her sister, and her mistrust of the adults around her, that allows readers a different kind of horror story.

And then it collapses upon itself; the book thinks it is far smarter than it actually is. It is a freshman-Gothic-101 novel, that guy in the coffee shop who one day decided "to be Goth," read Wikipedia articles and watched notable films, and now collects naive 14-year-olds who seek his attention and self-professed authority, but yet has only a shallow understanding of his given subject and no actual drive to become truly informed. This negative attributes come in two forms: the dreadfully painful "blog posts" and the conclusion. The conclusion is particularly ham-fisted, walking a line of bad plagiarism, and ate the remainder of my patience.

The blog, written by Merry under a pen-name, undertakes an analysis of the show "The Possession" fifteen years after it aired. The writing of these chapters is particularly painful, adopting the tone not unlike what adults would assume a fourteen-year-old girl would sound like. Complete garbage in form and function, it's no better in the actual analysis it is supposed to provide, offering buzz words popular in critical fields without generating anything of substance. Suffering through these chapters was made worse when twice the writing was praised - once, when Merry tells the interviewer Rachel that her column had been picked up by a larger publication for its quality, and again when Rachel, a "best-selling author," (1) says "I've read the series of essays on the show three times, now. It's very well written and a compelling criticism and deconstruction, Merry" (256). That Tremblay has to put these words into the mouth of his fictional author, without letting the text stand on its own, speaks volumes to the actual quality of the writing.

It is the conclusion of Merry's story, however, which put the final nails in the critical coffin: I could ignore the terrible blog entries, and wade through the slugged allusions that are basically the book's bibliography, but I could not stomach the poorly-executed appropriation of a much better book for the grand finale. Near the novel's conclusion it is revealed that John Barrett poisons his family just days after the final episode of the show is aired, sparing only young Merry. In her final interview with Rachel, however, Merry reveals that the sequence of events established by the police - of John's communications with a Westboro Baptist church member who urges him to murder them all, of this individual sending John the potassium cyanide, of a broken John poisoning the family's dinner - is wrong. Throughout the story Marjorie has shared stories with Merry, including a morbid tale of a father poisoning all but the youngest child; in her psychotic episodes she swears to the family that they are all going to die; as her episodes subside in Merry's solitary presence, Marjorie convinces the eight-year-old that she is faking, and it's actually their manic depressive father who is possessed. Pulling on this bond Marjorie convinces Merry that John is going to poison them, that she stole the poison, and that they need to slip just a little into the family dinner so the parents pass out and the daughters can escape. And thus Merry finds herself pouring the cyanide into the spaghetti sauce she has a long habit of refusing, only to be betrayed when Marjorie takes a large portion with a wink, and the entire family quickly dies. Merry is found three days later.

But Shirley Jackson does this so much better, in We Have Always Lived in the Castle. In her novel the psychotic sister poisons the sugar she knows all but her favorite sister Constance will eat, killing their family to rid herself of the parental authority figures she mistrusts, and securing the full attention of the sister she adores. Merricat and Constance share endless nonsense stories featuring them both; Marjorie and "Merry monkey" share endless nonsense stories featuring them both. They are sisters separated by six years, initially living with parents they mistrust, and one suffers from a deep-seated psychosis that leaves her imagining violent actions against those around her. Tremblay's appropriation of Jackson's ideas is not clever allusion but unimaginative plagiarism.

Skip this one, and read Jackson's much superior novel instead.

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LibraryThing member titania86

The Barrett's are a normal family who live in New England. All of them are devastated when Marjorie, the 14 year old daughter, exhibits signs of acute schizophrenia. At first, they opt to use conventional psychiatry and psychology for treatment, but when her condition worsens, her father John feels

that his new found devotion in religion is the key to her health. He believes his daughter is possessed by demons and modern medicine can't help. Merry, the youngest daughter at 8, is just confused. She has no idea what's wrong with her sister and becomes annoyed that no one pays attention to her anymore. The family's lives get turned upside down when they become involved in filming a reality TV show called The Possession about exorcising the demon from their daughter. Is Marjorie really possessed? Is she faking or is she simply mentally ill?

A Head Full of Ghosts is a complex book that tells its story in a variety of ways. The story is being told to a best selling author who is writing adult Merry's account of the events. Some scenes are in present day with Merry chatting with the author, but her account is told through the eyes of her eight year old self. Even assuming Merry remembers everything accurately (which she admits she probably isn't) and isn't lying, she doesn't really know everything that happened. She was eight and protected from a lot of what went on behind the scenes and the decision-making processes. Of course she cared for her sister, but after a while simply became annoyed that no one really paid attention to her any longer. No one plays games with her anymore and her boundless energy is now seen as an annoyance since her sister has been sick. When horrible things start happening, Merry is of course terrified but has no idea if her sister is faking, possessed, or mentally ill. All she knows is that Marjorie isn't a fun playmate anymore and has no idea if the things she perceives are real or just imagination heightened by fear.

As a result of her sister's situation, Merry's parents are also very different people. Her father John is suddenly devoutly religious and prays for long periods of time. Merry is mostly confused by it because it was never part of her life. Now she feels deficient in her father's eyes and scared of his fervor. The religious leaders that come to supervise and exorcise take complete control. If he's capable of finding such an extreme "solution" to his daughter's problem, what else is he capable of? Her mother Sarah doesn't agree with the religious solution, but she's desperate to find a cure. She isn't happy about the TV show or the exorcism, so she turns to drinking heavily and becoming moody. The TV show portrays her as confused and barely there, but she always tried to keep Merry and Marjorie (to a lesser extent) from being exploited or scared. I found Merry's narrative rings true. She's just a normal kid, not some super smart, precocious adult version of a kid and it's refreshing.

This brings us to Marjorie. Most possession stories are about fear of girls turning into women, including becoming sexual, defying authority, and simply existing. This one seems to be no different. Marjorie is 14 years old, just around puberty. She used to be cheerful and eager to write stories with her little sister, but now, she wants some privacy and a life away from her family. Like normal teenage girl, she is contrary and sullen. Unlike a normal teenage girl, she is prone to fits of violence and other strange behavior. The most memorable one is after she's been sick, she graphically and messily masturbates while on her period and then urinates and defecates on the carpet. This is the most extreme and disgusting version of this type of scene in fiction. It really boils down to fear of women's sexuality by showing normal sexual expression in a grotesque way. In The Exorcist, it was Reagan stabbing her genitals and shoving her mother's face in the wound while spewing obscenities. A Head Full of Ghosts does the same thing, taking it to further extreme. She also does the requisite rebellious things turned up: physically fighting her father, obscenities, cursing the church, etc, which are an exaggerated version of normal teenage rebellion. It seems like Marjorie is faking for much of the novel, she admits it herself. However, she may be lying or delusional or possessed. I like that Merry and the readers by extension never definitely know which one.

In addition to this account, a blog by an annoying horror fan (who also turns out to be Merry writing under a pseudonym) analyzing and commenting on The Possession and descriptions of scenes from the actual TV show (edited from actual events or re-enactments aired on the Discovery Channel) are included in the story. I love how meta the story is in analyzing and picking apart itself so I don't have to do it (but I did a bit anyway). The entire narrative is through Merry's eyes. The ending throws the veracity of literally everything into question and I like it. Some may see the entire novel as pointless at that point, but I enjoyed the journey. I don't find the book scary, but it is unsettling. The suspense is built at times, but sometimes huge revelations are stated plainly. A couple of the scenes are practically burned into my brain and I enjoyed Tremblay's unique writing as he layered the story deceptively through one point of view. He took a genre I don't enjoy and made it interesting to me. IT still has misogynistic elements, but it's hard to get away from when it's an inherent part of the genre. I can't wait for his next book, Disappearance at Devil's Rock.

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LibraryThing member waclements7

Very clever--intriguing combination of narrative and blog. Interesting social analysis through horror and gothic (and yay, the enclosure as a character!) of a family, but are the questions really answered? Horror fans will love the multitudes of references. I majored in English Lit with an emphasis

on Gothic Fiction and loved those touches. It wasn't what I expected but ended up being so much more, and that ending...

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LibraryThing member DrApple

This is a good psychological horror story told from the perspective of an 8-year old girl. The narrator is an adult now, but the story is told as she remembers it from her childhood. Is her sister mentally ill or possessed? What happened to her sister and her parents? It is creepy and suspenseful

without being too graphic. I would recommend this to readers who like a little scare.

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LibraryThing member LeleliaSky

Wow, what an amazing book! This story is written from the view of the youngest child in the family. She watches as her teenage sister struggles with mental illness(schizophrenia), and while she loves her sister, she fears her too. Her unemployed father reaches his breaking point and becomes

obsessed with a religious outlet that brings possession and exorcism into the mix. We have to wonder at times if we can trust the account being given. We have to remember that this is a traumatized 24(or so) year old woman giving her account of the events that took place when she was 8 years old. This is a roller coaster ride that shows a incredible view of mental illness breaking down a family who was already on the brink of collapse. Just amazing writing!

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LibraryThing member seasonsoflove

The minute I saw the description of this book, I knew I had to read it. It combines so many tropes and genres I love-reality shows (and a paranormal one to boot), urban legends, a past that may not be what everyone believes it to be, secrets, unreliable narrators, horror, mystery, and even some

creative use of outside media brought into the text (in this case, a blog). In short, this was a book I was desperate to read, and this was a book that was a really good read.

We are introduced to Merry, eight years old when the events filmed on The Possession took place, now grown up and telling her story to a writer. As Merry tells about her sister and the terrifying changes that took place around her, about her father's dependence on religion and his desperate turn to an exorcism (and the promised money from the reality show) to fix everything, about her mother's descent into drinking and depression, we are taken back into the past, shown the beginning, middle, and end of this terrifying tale. This is interspersed with a horror blogger who describes in detail the various episodes of The Possession, and analyzes them at length.

But is what we are being told the truth? Merry is an unreliable narrator, not only because of her young age when the events she describes took place, but because she readily admits that watching The Possession and reading articles on it may have caused her memories to warp and blur. What she thinks she remembers may not have actually happened that way.

And that is what is most amazing about this book, in the end. The terror builds until it is almost unbearable, the shocking revelation comes, and as readers are left in shock, they are also left wondering if Merry has just fed them over a hundred pages of lies, and, if so, if she did this on purpose.

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LibraryThing member ccookie

First words:
"This must be so difficult for you, Meredith."

Stephen King tweeted “A HEAD FULL OF GHOSTS, by Paul Tremblay: Scared the living hell out of me, and I'm pretty hard to scare.” When I read that comment I thought, well, I have to read that one and I requested it from the library

immediately.

This is not a genre I usually read but lately I seem to be fixated on horror or psychological thrillers.

The Barretts were an ordinary suburban family with an unemployed father, a working mother, a teenage daughter Marjorie and an 8 year old daughter, Merry.

It is Merry that tells the story as a young adult but the tale she tells is from the 8 year old’s prespective so some details are fuzzy, many questions are raised.

15 years ago, as Marjorie began to exhibit bizarre behaviours, she was considered to be mentally ill but gradually her father came to believe that she was possessed by evil spirits.

The family agreed to participate in the filming of a reality show called “Possession” to improve their financial situation and allowed an exorcism to be held to help their daughter. Horrific scenes were filmed, both as they occurred or as they were re-created for the show. And the exorcisim had devastating consequences.

As the description from the back cover of the book says, this story raises disturbing questions about memory and reality, science and religion, and the very nature of evil.

I found this to be a compelling read. Couldn’t put it down, well, couldn’t stop listening to it. The audio book was well read by the narrator, Joy Osmanski.

I am not fond of reality shows and this books reinforces why I find them distasteful. The filming of this show contributes to the disintegration of this family.

Fairly close to the end, I saw the ending coming. But I was shocked nonetheless! This book was well written and kept me guessing all the way through.

I found it to be believable and distressing. Was Mary ill? Was she truly possessed? Was her father the one who was mentally ill? Or the mother? Or the little sister? This has left me disturbed and thinking. And I like a book that leaves me thinking.

4.0 stars

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LibraryThing member susanbeamon

I had to stop and think about this book after I read it. On one level it is a thriller, with a family poisoned by the unemployed father after trying to deal unsuccessfully with a child's mental illness. On another level it is about a family destroyed by a "reality" television show featuring an

exorcism. Another level the family is plagued and destroyed by a manipulative teenager, frightened by her father's unemployment and decent into depression. Whatever it is, and we are shown these things through the eyes of an eight year old, this story includes madness, reality television, unemployment, poison, lies, misdirection, secrets, manipulation, and fame seeking. Personal note, I do not like reality television that invades a home watching the daily interactions between people in what should be their refuge from the world.

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LibraryThing member CasualFriday

So you think your family has problems? Meet the Barretts. 14-yr-old Marjorie Barrett is exhibiting strange, frightening, destructive behavior. Her mother believes she suffers from mental illness and has her in therapy. Her Catholic father is convinced the cause is demonic possession, and he enlists

the aide of an exorcist. Being unemployed and at the end of his financial rope, he also agrees to allow a reality television to show to film the whole affair. A great idea, right?

This supremely dysfunctional family's story is told by Marjorie's eight-year old sister Merry some 15 years later. Merry often bears the brunt of Marjorie's frightening behavior, and it is easy for the reader to believe that something supernatural is afoot. Poor Merry is of necessity an unreliable narrator, because she was just a little kid when it all went down and she truly didn't understand all that was happening. So it's understandable if some of her story is a little off.

I really liked this book. It's a beautiful crafted little horror tale, with real thrills and chills as well as a realistic portrayal of a family in crisis.

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LibraryThing member jen.e.moore

Despite the fact that possession stories are my least favorite horror stories, this is easily the best horror novel I've read in a while. It walks that wonderfully ambiguous line between supernatural and realistic, and draws attention to how horrific that line can be. It deconstructs its own story

without falling into cliche through the brilliant structural device: the same story being told by the same woman at about the same time, but in two different contexts and with a very different emphasis. I absolutely recommend it for anyone interested in horror fiction and more specifically in possession narratives.

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LibraryThing member flying_monkeys

Hmmm, not sure why exactly A Head Full of Ghosts was just okay for me. Perhaps it was one demonic possession story too many in the same month? Maybe the inclusion of Karen's blog posts, which not only tore me away from Merry's narrative but also spoiled events yet to be revealed by Merry? Or that

the story was way more cinematic than literary? Whatever the reason, I would probably only recommend this one to horror movie fans or lovers of all things demonic possession.

3 stars (I would definitely read something else by Tremblay in the future)

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LibraryThing member pmackey

What a great story! I listened to the audiobook version and was disturbed and entertained. The author lets you know (more or less) what's coming as the book unfolds, but he still manages to surprise you. There's a lot going on and I'm afraid I may have missed significant plot elements so I really

want to come back and read it again. You think you know what's happening, you think you've figured out the plot, and then the author surprises you. Excellent storytelling.

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LibraryThing member marysneedle

Anyone who enjoys Shirley Jackson will love this book. It kept me on the edge of my seat and I could not put it down. There were so may twists that kept you thinking and even the ending has you rethinking what really happened.

LibraryThing member Amanda.MK

I could not put this book down.
When I was done with it I wasn't certain even if I loved it or hated it. I felt so strongly about it and the connection I made with the characters and the ending.. oh the ending... I wanted to throw the book across the room but I also want to give Paul Tremblay a hug

at some point and thank him for filling my head with ghosts :)

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LibraryThing member JoshuaAtkins

Intense and engrossing. If you like scary books, this is one you NEED to read.

LibraryThing member ewhatley

If Stephen King says it scares him, then I know I must read it. It is creepy and scary. The author does a good job of developing the character, Merry, so I cared about her. Fast paced and lots of WOW moments. Recommend for horror fans.

LibraryThing member EmpressReece

Merry, Merry quite contrary... So I just finished reading Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts and it really left me with a head full of aches! I normally don't read too much horror but this seemed like it wasn't too over-the-top so I took a chance on it. It was weird but the story was also really

good. You could almost believe that it truly happened and I had to check to see if it was based on true events, which actually made the story even better because it was believable. However, I did not like the blog pages, even after I find out who the author was. They were very distracting and I thought they took away from the overall story. The ending was also very ambiguous and I really hate endings like that so I deducted a whole star for that reason in itself. Merry just through me for such a loop at the end and I'm still asking myself who is truly the crazy one in that family???

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LibraryThing member caanderson

I won this book on a Goodreads contest. I was drawn into it and stayed hooked until the heartbreaking end. Told by the adult sister during an interview she retells what happened to her and her family when she was eight. I loved it!

LibraryThing member Cherylk

This book is told from the first person perspective of Merry. She is grown up and being interviewed about the events that led up to the present. I liked that this story was told from the first person voice of Merry but the younger version. Seeing everything through Merry's eyes helped me really get

the full experience of what she and her family went through including Marjorie.

Although I would classify this book more of a psychological thriller than horror. Yes, the events that transpired to the Barretts was creepy, it did not make the hairs on my arms stand up or keep me from being afraid of the dark. I would say it was more like the Amityville Horror type of scary. The ending however was mild and a little disappointing. For all of the things that transpired to lead up to the ending was sad. However this was a quick read. I did like what I read and would check out more books by this author.

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