A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

*SPOILERS* This is not so much a book review as me unpacking what I just read.

I love a good, old-fashioned possession story. I am a huge sucker for classic good vs evil stories, God vs, the devil, that is my jam. Unfortunately, this is not a story about demonic possession. I remain puzzled about why the author chose to reveal to the reader so early on that Marjorie was faking, I would have liked to decide for myself.  

Despite the obviousness that there is no demon present in Marjorie, there is still a lot to unpack in this book that is worth talking about. Well, let me take a step back. I think there is a snobbish part of my brain that wants to point out how obvious everything was, but there are many breadcrumbs left by the author that led down alternate paths.

For example, when Merry claims that she “swears she remembers” seeing her mother tie her sister down before the exorcism, that is our first clue that memory is not absolute, and we have an unreliable narrator on our hands. The only confession we have that Marjorie was faking is relayed to us through Merry and her memories from (15, I think?) years ago. How trustworthy is that information, really?

Also consider that we know for a fact that Merry has historically lied about Marjorie’s antics. The basement scene! This was not a “whoops, I didn’t see what I thought I saw moment,” this was intentional deception. We can be certain that Merry cannot be trusted.

And this is where the book falls apart a bit for me. The author badly wanted us to look to Merry and question who in this story was, in fact, possessed. But the pieces just don’t fit, and in a way I resented how every theme of the book felt so…glaring. The blog passages from “Karen” were entertaining, but I don’t particularly need a stand-in character for me, the reader.

Overall though, I enjoyed the hell out of this book. It has some genuinely creepy moments, and it’s a fun love letter to the demonic possession genre. My largest gripe is the lack of subtlety, but I definitely recommend it and look forward to reading other people’s thoughts on the themes. 

Under the Skin

I am stuck between dying to discuss this book with someone and wishing I never read it. I devoured this book in one sitting sometime last week, and I still wake up in the middle of the night struck by a particularly gruesome or melancholy passage that has burrowed into my brain. The back of the book doesn't give much away, but the bare-bones explanation intrigued me. A woman picks up hitchhikers and has meaningful conversations with them about life, the universe, and everything, that is really all the author wants us to know before delving into the meat of the story. There are passages that made me squirm and put me off my lunch, but what makes this book so beautiful are the subtleties. Once the overarching message of the plot is revealed it is a bit eye-rolling taken at face value, but because the plot unfolds through the eyes of our long-suffering protagonist (I use that term loosely, I found it extremely difficult to sympathize with her) and her perspective is skewed by the torments she has endured, there are moments when her heinous behavior is almost justified. But that is really the point, we all justify cruelty on a daily basis for the sake of profit and convenience

Excession

If you are not reading Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, you are seriously missing out.  Many people I have discussed them with are turned off by the notion that there is one pan-human force in the universe that is all-knowing and capable of dealing with any potential threat the universe can throw their way, and if that idea sounds boring to you, I highly recommend you begin the Culture series with Excession as your introduction, and revisit Consider Phlebas later on.  The title implies the conflict -- what happens when the Culture encounters a force so completely beyond their comprehension that is exceeds all known explanations?  Even the highly advanced Minds housed in Culture ships cannot begin to fathom what this mysterious spherical object is that appeared out of nowhere at the edge of space.  Such a rare and thus far never before encountered object is clearly valuable, and the Culture must battle another alien race called the Affront that refused to assimilate into the Culture long ago.
The horror in this novel can be found in the Affront culture. The Affront are without a doubt intelligent, but the Culture finds their barbaric experiments with genetic engineering utterly deplorable. 
The real delight in this novel is found between the interactions of the Culture ships.  Every ship has a Mind with a unique (and often plucky) personality, and this novel provides a great deal of information about ship Minds that is missing from his earlier novels.  The Minds possess not only a fantastic intellect, but a biting wit that will not be tempered by their pan-human commanders (and nor would they want to).

What is this blog all about?

You may dismiss some of the material I plan to cover as "trash." Yes, the contents of this blog may not always explore the upper echelons of literature, but these novels speak to me, they are not a light in the grim darkness of everyday life but something even darker. The title of this blog is a throwback to Clive Barker's Books of Blood, which I adore.
There is something almost magical when I have a book in my hands that I simply cannot put down, no matter how late the hour or how pressing work or social activities may be. I am on a constant quest to rediscover that feeling of awe, the knowledge that I have something special and completely unlike anything I have ever read before in my hands with no clue as to what will happen next.
That feeling often comes to me when I read horror novels. It seems completely opposite my nature as a calm, shy young woman that abhors violence in the material world. When I was in the seventh grade and picked up my first Stephen King novel (it was Cujo) it is not an exaggeration to say that it changed my life. I admired the courage of the main characters and reveled in their naked fear, absolutely delighted to find an author that did not restrain himself like the authors of the young adult novels I had admired before. Many more gifted authors have explained this phenomenon more eloquently than I could ever hope to, but what it boils down to is an unabashed delight in the voyeurism that horror novels provide from the absolute safety of our own homes. Who cares if you had a bad day, this poor woman is being held captive by a rabid dog!
I do want to warn you of spoilers. I get to the tough, leathery meat of these novels so if you encounter a review for something you haven't read yet, you may want to move on.