A Head Full of Ghosts

A creepy but not too creepy title. Young Marjorie Barrett is possessed by a demon, and her family decide to allow a TV crew to film them and the possession episodes, with an exorcism to be the series finale. Not surprisingly, this goes very, very badly. The novel's narrator is Marjorie's younger sister, Merry, who tells the story from her current perspective as a 23-year-old adult and from her point of view at eight years old, as the events at the Barrett house transpired. And then there's Karen, a blogger rewatching the TV series while live blogging about the episodes. What actually happened in the Barrett household and whether or not Marjorie was possessed are discussed by all three narrators—readers will have to decide if any of them is reliable. One of the more interesting moments in the work occurs in Merry's apartment when she meets with a reporter to discuss the possession and the reporter sees shelves of classic possession books and DVDs, except for one glaring omission (the missing title, Shirley Jackson's We Have Always Lived in the Castle, should give readers a heads-up about what's really going on). The horror here is less graphic than in The Exorcist or The Omen and will appeal to readers who aren't sure how deeply into the genre they want to go. Merry's bookshelves will provide a great bibliography for next reads.