A review by paracosm
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
3.0
This would have worked better if it wasn't a horror book. The premise of this book, about a family getting a reality TV show about their "possesed" daughter could have been amazing for a literary fiction story. It could have involved themes of the dangers of believing pseudo-science instead of actual medicine, mental illness, how fake TV is, or others. Those are sort of hinted throughout the novel, but none of them are the main focus because the author is too busy writing a horror book that doesn't even end up being scary at the end. Seriously, the horror element was terrible.
It's clear that the author wants us to believe that the father is a religious fanatic who puts God above his family, but it's not well stablished. He prays, reads the Bible, goes to church and those actions are treated like proof of his insanity, but that's just stuff that regular religious people do. The worst thing he does is attacking a bunch of protestors that had been camping outside his home for weeks while yelling profanities, and it kinda makes sense that he would do that.
For such a short book there's so much filler. Every once in a while the author stops the plot to explain scene that we just witnessed and to tell the reader exactly what should they think about them. Those didn't need to be there. Overall this book was not worth the time I spent with it.
It's clear that the author wants us to believe that the father is a religious fanatic who puts God above his family, but it's not well stablished. He prays, reads the Bible, goes to church and those actions are treated like proof of his insanity, but that's just stuff that regular religious people do. The worst thing he does is attacking a bunch of protestors that had been camping outside his home for weeks while yelling profanities, and it kinda makes sense that he would do that.
For such a short book there's so much filler. Every once in a while the author stops the plot to explain scene that we just witnessed and to tell the reader exactly what should they think about them. Those didn't need to be there. Overall this book was not worth the time I spent with it.