Paul Tremblay's A Head Full of Ghosts - Review

A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


A tale of demonic possession and the frenzy in its wake.

Author Rachel Neville interviews Merry Barrett about events that befell her family fifteen years earlier, when her older sister Marjorie began to display signs of schizophrenia, taking Merry back to the darkest chapter in her family's history.

The psychiatrists prove unable to help, while Marjorie’s symptoms grow increasingly severe and her behaviour more concerning. Turning to the Church for help, the family become convinced that Marjorie is the victim of demonic possession.

As cameras for reality TV show “The Possession” follow every development and broadcast their terror to the world, the family prepare for the exorcism, something from which none of them may ever be able to recover.

‘A Head Full of Ghosts’ is Paul Tremblay’s first horror novel, following two detective novels and several horror short stories. The multi-layered plot is narrated from the perspective of Merry, the younger sister of the possessed teenager, both in retrospect as an adult and through her memories as a child. Tremblay captures Merry's young voice incredibly well and through her eyes a portrait of her family evolves throughout. Moving backwards and forwards in time, the events surrounding Marjorie’s possession are unveiled, a suspenseful escalation towards the exorcism and its aftermath.

With some characters believing in Marjorie’s possession and others skeptical, the novel captures the dual approach from both the perspective of belief in demons and the traditional Catholic exorcism and a disbelief in there being any supernatural or preternatural influence, instead the human characters themselves perpetuating the events and becoming caught up in a frenzy, akin to the moral panics of history. This is as much a social and psychological drama as it is a possession story, combining to form a horror thriller as subtle as it is blatant in its themes, this duality proving highly effective.

There is a distinctly modern edge through the lens of both the reality TV show and the blog which retrospectively analyses the show. As we so often experience in the media and through social media, the scrutiny of others only seems to contribute to the chaos surrounding the turmoil and the feeling of inevitability over what is to come.

‘A Head Full of Ghosts’ spins a captivating, enjoyable and thought-provoking tale. The first book I’ve read by Paul Tremblay, it leaves me eager to delve into the horrors presented in more of his work.



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