All right dear readers. Here we go. All things post modernary, literary, genreary, culinary, and readanary. Infinite Stages welcomes you to darkness. Beware of spoilers… Tremblay will spoil you.
I am easily startled. I jump scare with the best of them. I unleash a very feminine shriek, gripping my wife’s arm, spilling popcorn with an outstretched finger hissing, “BEWARE.”
But I am not easily frightened. And I certainly do not stay up all night staring at the ceiling because the hotel I’m in has something flashing over and over again. Because the air conditioner kicks in at an interval I can’t calculate. Because more people seem to walk past my door at four in the morning and stop… stop there. My wife’s sleeping breaths do not cause me anxiety.
And yet.
I will not say reading A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay will necessarily frighten you. It might not have frightened me under other circumstances but the fear and disgust which I felt is a secondary reason to pick up this novel. Tremblay weaves together a narrative that is horrific, intelligent, self aware, and deliciously untrustworthy.
I am an ardent defender of plot. Sure, my friends in the literary towers who force me to scrub their ivory bases tell me character is king. But I will defend a well structured tightly woven plot to the death. But I am not a defender of summary. Most well done fiction can be summed up in a few words, hell the Victorians will often do it for you: Pride and Prejudice, War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, Coke and Pepsi.
Classics.
But it is often necessary so here you go.
Merry reflects back on that wacky time when her older sister, Majorie, was possessed by a demon (maybe) and a reality crew came to film their troubles… Also there are blog posts.
Done.
Because like most good work, this isn’t about an easy plot, easy characters, or even a tried and true horror convention. It’s about those unnamed things between words that are never easy.
The narrator is classically unreliable. Honest about it (or is she…. gasp!) she goes to great lengths to make you doubt her memory, reliability, honesty, and anything else you might care to trust.
I have always found the unreliable narrator (and focus on it) a tad amusing. What does that mean? Does it mean there are reliable narrators out there like John Watson (or is it James)? It is a shame Sherlock Holmes casts doubts on the good doctors retelling time and time again. Or does it mean we should check our sources. Make sure the author's point of view covers all the truth. Which is made up…. There is no TV show, The Possession, no police report to check, no witnesses to interrogate. This is it, baby . The reality only exists as provided. That’s not an unreliable narrator that’s good old fashioned first person point of view.
But it does give us permission to do a couple of things. I often think unreliable is code for un-likable or may I say evil? Merry for the majority of the story is an eight year old girl who is going through a vicious frightening ordeal. This is a character you cannot help but feel for (and do) but if in the back of your mind you think adult Merry is a liar. Well… that can change things now can’t it? It also lets us select our own truth and claim that truth as the authors. I can say that Majorie is possessed despite Merry’s supposed claims otherwise because she’s an unreliable narrator. Look what happened here, here, and there, and here again. And HERE! See, the devil is real.
Look to your own initial impulses for you views as I doubt the author will ever validate them.
It is most importantly from a horror perspective the first blow keeps you perpetually off guard.
The very tight first person from an unreliable narrator, the (sorta) meta fictional blog posts that break down this story into the history of possession horror, the reveal of outside influences (the show runners, the backers, the devil?) that could easily fool an eight year old, and the motivation of Merry who is our only guide. All of this helps make the form of the work as unsettling as the setting. A New England home, right next to Salem.
The family falls into horror types as well, Father growing more religious, more violent, a mother who drinks to stupor, and a demonic sister. It is a risk for self aware, ironic writers to pat themselves on the back at the cleverness of these archetypes. But the Father and Marjorie never feel like stock. They are people who you grow to love and fear. When Head Full of Ghosts is at its best you don’t realize the trope until after Tremblay points it out. And, at least in my case, the reaction is not realization but anger. How dare you condense this father into a symbol of patriarchy and nothing more! Or my fear into bourgeoisie class (un)consciousness. It’s more than that! It’s not that simple. … Lane…. Who are you talking too?
I will not fall into unequivocal praise (biologically incapable). While necessary for the final payoff, I found the Rachel and modern day Merry slow and irritating. The dialog between adults is not nearly as sharp or sparkling as between children. The mother (and there are reasons for this) feels like the trope the others transcend. Sometimes the descriptions are so intense and fast they fly by forcing you to reread and gain little more from the second go through.
But read this book. And more importantly read this book and ignore everything I have said. I am also an unreliable guide. But what stood out for me. Was in a world of irony, understanding, easy fundamentalism, easy relativism, and to quote a man greater than me, Easy Grace this book puts you up against evil. And despite what Star Wars, Harry Potter, your conspiracy filled uncle, or your loving hippie aunt might say…
Evil is not easy. It is not easy to understand. It is not easy to fight. It is not tied to a God or lack of one. It is not centered in one person. But… It does absorb. It does make you complicit. It does mock and confuse you. It turns your heroes into villains without a soothing symmetry. It pollutes your deepest beliefs and uses it for its purpose. Resistance is possible, heroics needed but… we are not all heroes… and we can all be villains.
We can all be murderers.
Until next time,
Lane McLeod Jackson
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