jdavidhacker1 reviewed A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
None
3 stars
Head Full of Ghosts is a solid unreliable narrator story with enough of an unresolved ending to leave the reader a lot of room to interpret events a number of ways. If that was the goal, and it seems that it was, it achieves that goal masterfully. Demons, mental illness, any number of metaphors or critical lenses could be applied. And I believe that's what Tremblay was going for. returnI don't give it a higher rating because while I think it achieves that goal, I don't think Tremblay can get out of his own way in terms of writing an enjoyable horror story here. The blog post asides feel both completely unnecessary, kind of jarring, and the reveal about them combined with their content and tone feels pretty unbelievable. If I work at it, I can come up with a semi-reasonable in story explanation for them (regardless of if our …
Head Full of Ghosts is a solid unreliable narrator story with enough of an unresolved ending to leave the reader a lot of room to interpret events a number of ways. If that was the goal, and it seems that it was, it achieves that goal masterfully. Demons, mental illness, any number of metaphors or critical lenses could be applied. And I believe that's what Tremblay was going for. returnI don't give it a higher rating because while I think it achieves that goal, I don't think Tremblay can get out of his own way in terms of writing an enjoyable horror story here. The blog post asides feel both completely unnecessary, kind of jarring, and the reveal about them combined with their content and tone feels pretty unbelievable. If I work at it, I can come up with a semi-reasonable in story explanation for them (regardless of if our interpretation of broader events is demonic possession or possible heritable mental illness), but it really feels like a stretch and at minimum only detracts from the overall story. Maybe even feels like its length padding.returnI think the other big flaw here is that Tremblay is a big fan of horror film and literature. He's clearly consumed a lot of it, thought deeply about it, and is able to draw on that for his work. None of that is bad in terms of informing his work. What does take me out of the story is...I feel like Tremblay wants us to know just how well versed he is in horror, wants us to appreciate how clever he is incorporating thinly veiled (or outright) references, homages, and etc. Some of that same 'see how clever and hip to horror I am' tone also comes through in some of his supplemental material (special features/liner notes) section at the end. Its off-putting, and again, kind of detracts from an otherwise very serious, thoughtful, and dramatic story. Even the cover itself feels like somewhat of a reference to Session 9, a horror film I personally find kind of unwatchable bad, but is huge in the horror fandom writ large and that Tremblay himself expresses being a fan of (referencing in and out of story).returnSo, solid, but definitely could have been better.
