The premise of this book is really great: an exorcism is gonna be performed on a possessed girl and a reality show is made to show how the family is living with this and to show the exorcism live. And as the blurb points it out, everything goes terribly wrong. And as the title also implies, there's no demon, only mentally ill girl, most likely schizophrenic.
It's a big calling for how mental diseases can be seem as paranormal activity, possession, etc. Or... is it? That ending...
I liked Merry in all her incarnations (and the subtle implications the different "personas" might suggest). I think the author observed his own children very well, or has very good memories from his own infancy or watched a lot of kids, as the sisters were well portrayed.
I also dislike reality shows for the same reasons they are portrayed in the book: nobody cares about the people being filmed as long as it gives audience.
The blog entries also provided some interesting passages, like if John Barret was the one being possessed by an insane amount of religious zealotry.
The only problem with the book is the pacing, as there's not a real sense of urgency and not enough disturbing/creepy scenes to compensate.
Ah, yes, and the book is not scary at all. One or other scene may at best make you unease. I'm getting really unlucky with Horror lately...
That is, until the last 20% of the book.
I read about exorcisms ending in tragedy by accidents or other stuff and when they begin and Marjorie complains about show more a certain situation, that really gave me the chills because I thought that how it was gonna happen, with her screaming help and that making everyone believe in the possession even harder and then refusing to believe anything she said, even if she was really dyeing.
But it didn't happen. But it also turned out to be much worse.
And the final chapter... wow. It was extremely ambiguous and left open a torrent of questions and doubts that pretty much caught me by surprise. I love when this happens.
More about it:If the Devil's greatest trick was to make the world think he doesn't exist, what would be more ironic if the possessed person was actually the main character, our narrator? And the one who we all thought was the only one who saw it?
Remember that Merry always wanted to hear stories, she had a lot of books and kept thinking and wanting more stories. The "voices" could be this desire's manifestation into Marjorie.
Marjorie also wants Merry present in the key moments of the show. It could just be a scared girl wanting the only person she really trusted and loved nearby. Or could it be for Merry to be somehow affected by the ritual and show the truth.
Why would she do this? Remember that Marjorie is much older (14) and Merry is 8 and would have to pass through all that. Putting herself in the spotlight, Marjorie would avoid Merry having to suffer and also be treated as some kind of guinea pig.
There's also the scene of the drawer moving alone and Marjorie screaming "This isn't me!", truly scared. Of course, we all suspect it's a tricky of the show. But what if it was Merry? That would explain why Marjorie got so scared, as she wouldn't be that upset from a mere studio trick like that, she probably researched it on the Internet. But then it happened, and if she suspected Merry, it would explain everything, especially considering the ending.
Remember again the story is from Merry's POV, so she could of course, have tricked us.
Which takes us to the blog posts. If the Devil tricked the world to not believe he exists, what could be more ironic than him using the Internet and making a blog post about The Possession show and deconstructing it and its key elements piece by piece?
A piece about how mental illness was/is and can be confused as paranormal activity is actually some evil plan to discredit the whole ritual and mock religion? Awesome.
It would also be utmost irony as Merry's alter ego is someone who is typing to be a feminist, pointing fingers at patriarchy and other stuff (take that conservatives!), but its purpose would be the same one that conservatives and religious groups say: discredit and destroy the family, morals, religion, etc. And that would make them right, if it is a possessed Merry subverting the system (take that progressists!)
The freezing scene at the ending also refers to how Marjorie was cold at the exorcism. And if I remember correctly, she went to meet Rachel with her red piece of cloth that she used when she was playing reporter with that camera. I can't figure out this meaning right now, but it's there.
And possessed Merry is foreshadowed, by Marjorie, no less:
]"After your performed the exorcism, how did you know that demon wasn't still in there, hiding? How do you know it didn't go in a hibernation state, quieting down to come out later, years and years later when no one would be around to help? Hey, how do you know if the wrong spirit left? What if you expelled the person's real spirit and only the demon's spirit was there to take its place? If I believed in any of that stuff, I'd be afraid that was going to happen to me."
Of course, this ultimate mind twist, with the possessed girl still possessed and alive at the end is just the supernatural path we are allowed to see.
We could, in the same way, come to the conclusion that Marjorie's schizophrenia simply caused all this. Remember that she spent a lot of time in the Internet, having a particular interest for families being destroyed and specially murdered by their fathers.
We know that John building a shrine and everything was a lie (if we can trust Merry, that is). The potassium cyanide couldn't be traced to John and he was doing no such thing, so it could only have been brought in by... Marjorie herself, which would surely know how to get the thing. I was buying stuff from the Internet, directly making deposits on seller's accounts at a much younger age than Marjorie.
Simply believing erroneously that their fate was gonna be the same as the terrible fates on the news she frequently read, she started her plan. A plan that didn't make any sense. Remember the reason for the reality show? Get money. The show ended and supposedly they should have received the money.
Although if they didn't, that could have made Marjorie's first plan (faking possession) worthy nothing and she feared the fate of the news she saw.
Broad speculation about this one.
Anyway, she thinks her father is mad, but also that her mother is totally unreliable and is slowly descending into madness as well, and she knows she herself hears voices in her head. So everyone is a danger to Merry, and that's why everyone, not only the father, needs to die.
Or just a symbolism for the devil "subverting and destroying the family."
And even while considering all this options, we have always to keep in mind that all the information is from Merry's POV. So the information isn't reliable.
It could just be that Merry is fed up with the three crazies and decided to get rid of them herself to get on with her life. Unlikely, but who knows. There are just too many contradictions in her own story to believe it really happened like that.
1) The jar was supposed to be brought to the police as proof of what their father was gonna do. But later Merry is saying she kept trying to make Marjorie hold the jar "like she was supposed to". Then it kept falling out as if "No, you are not gonna blame that on me". In there she had two possible culprits. The crazy father or the crazy sister.
Yeah, I know, she is 8. But if Internet stories and such are used as basis, you can Google such stuff done by kids and it's there, and much worse. We really wouldn't think of them doing such things, right?
2) The contradictory story of how her aunt was the one who arrived at the house, when it was actually the therapist and the police.
She even says "The memory of Auntie Erin coming into my bedroom, saving me, carrying me downstairs to her car... it has been reassigned, or shuffled off to be part of another more appropriate memory of the years spent living with my amazing aunt."
Wait a second. What is this "appropriate memory" of "being saved, carried downstairs to the car"? What does that mean? An episode of paranormal manifestation? Merry attempting suicide? Developing schizophrenia herself? Saving from what? She is not saying it didn't happen, she said it did happen, but later.
3) The manipulation talk, about her family and even herself to do the things they did. Nice touch. Why the devil should show his face to do his things? Or of course, a convenient excuse for the murders.
4) The fingertips on the poison jar. It is said most of the prints were "smudged and unreadable" and that the only partial they could lift belonged to Merry's father. How strange, specially considering that 1) Merry said she tried to put the jar into Marjorie's hands a lot of times and 2) She is found under the table, but no sign of the jar (when she said she was upstairs in her bedroom with it). Anyway, plenty of time for her to carry Marjorie's (or hers) original plan and make it sure that her father's prints would be the only one readable.
Yes, she is 8 and Marjorie 14, but if they researched so many things on the Internet, they would also know about fingertips.
5) Another possible explanation for the potassium cyanide: John Barret never intended to kill anyone and Marjorie also didn't buy it (she probably couldn't have, anyway).
So how the cyanide was in the house and nobody could trace the source?
It's in the beginning of the book, about John's job. He works in a factory, a toy factory.
Potassium cyanide is used for electroplating, a process primarily used to change the surface properties of an object (e.g. abrasion and wear resistance, corrosion protection, lubricity, aesthetic qualities, etc.), but may also be used to build up thickness on undersized parts or to form objects by electroforming.
There are toys who do contain very small amounts of the substance, actually.
It all combines with his work, hm? It's said he was promoted, but he still could have gotten the material from his work.
It may be a little stretchy, but it is a possibility on how the thing was there. Of course, it could as well have been for killing insects or such, although no such activity in shown in the book. So I'm guessing the toy factory segment serves to drop the hint on how the cyanide was there.
Because Marjorie could've as well bought the thing herself, as she had free access to her laptop and Internet and was easy to get it, if she wanted. The problem would be payment. Maybe she could have convinced her mother/father to pay for something she liked saying it was something else? There were eight days before the exorcism and who knows how much after the show was finished. The problem would be receiving it, unless she got it from some suicide website that could disguise the true package.
Of course, there's the priest letter "You know what you have to do", which is very convenient, to the face and also extremely unlikely, for one reason: John is very religious, and he would know that murder and suicide is a major sin.
So whether John had the cyanide from his work by some reason or Marjorie bought it, most likely her schizophrenia was affecting her too much and she thought her father was gonna kill everyone, or she simply took the news from the Internet way too seriously and came up with the plan (probably from the Internet as well).
We can't even be sure that Marjorie even came up with the plan at all, considering we can't trust Merry either, and there is that part where Marjorie urges Merry to eat, and she is smiling and all happy, as if cured and and just attempting to light the mood.
What if Merry got confused and had ended up eating too? Marjorie certainly wouldn't want that. And she didn't need to make a show either, as nobody suspected anything. Considering that, it looked like Marjorie didn't even knew what was going on.
It's also funny because the coffee shop gets all cold exactly at that part, when Merry finished telling about the cyanide and what "really" happened. A very big hint, in my opinion.
And there's yet more: The blog post about "you all wish it was a demon because it sounded cool" or something like that.
So we thinking Merry is possessed means we fell for that and are really no better than the TV show! The most likely scenario is that Merry, understandably, simply developed some mental illness of her own after all that happened.
And we are treating her the same way the show treated Marjorie and that made us despise them!
I thought giving this a 3, mostly because of the pace and for not being scary (this is classified as Horror, after all) and despite Merry being interesting.
But the ending had me mulling over for quite some time, and that is good, as most books have me closing them and moving to the next without really much deep thinking.
So it gets an extra for that. show less
It's a big calling for how mental diseases can be seem as paranormal activity, possession, etc. Or... is it? That ending...
I liked Merry in all her incarnations (and the subtle implications the different "personas" might suggest). I think the author observed his own children very well, or has very good memories from his own infancy or watched a lot of kids, as the sisters were well portrayed.
I also dislike reality shows for the same reasons they are portrayed in the book: nobody cares about the people being filmed as long as it gives audience.
The blog entries also provided some interesting passages, like if John Barret was the one being possessed by an insane amount of religious zealotry.
The only problem with the book is the pacing, as there's not a real sense of urgency and not enough disturbing/creepy scenes to compensate.
Ah, yes, and the book is not scary at all. One or other scene may at best make you unease. I'm getting really unlucky with Horror lately...
That is, until the last 20% of the book.
I read about exorcisms ending in tragedy by accidents or other stuff and when they begin and Marjorie complains about show more a certain situation, that really gave me the chills because I thought that how it was gonna happen, with her screaming help and that making everyone believe in the possession even harder and then refusing to believe anything she said, even if she was really dyeing.
But it didn't happen. But it also turned out to be much worse.
And the final chapter... wow. It was extremely ambiguous and left open a torrent of questions and doubts that pretty much caught me by surprise. I love when this happens.
More about it:
Remember that Merry always wanted to hear stories, she had a lot of books and kept thinking and wanting more stories. The "voices" could be this desire's manifestation into Marjorie.
Marjorie also wants Merry present in the key moments of the show. It could just be a scared girl wanting the only person she really trusted and loved nearby. Or could it be for Merry to be somehow affected by the ritual and show the truth.
Why would she do this? Remember that Marjorie is much older (14) and Merry is 8 and would have to pass through all that. Putting herself in the spotlight, Marjorie would avoid Merry having to suffer and also be treated as some kind of guinea pig.
There's also the scene of the drawer moving alone and Marjorie screaming "This isn't me!", truly scared. Of course, we all suspect it's a tricky of the show. But what if it was Merry? That would explain why Marjorie got so scared, as she wouldn't be that upset from a mere studio trick like that, she probably researched it on the Internet. But then it happened, and if she suspected Merry, it would explain everything, especially considering the ending.
Remember again the story is from Merry's POV, so she could of course, have tricked us.
Which takes us to the blog posts. If the Devil tricked the world to not believe he exists, what could be more ironic than him using the Internet and making a blog post about The Possession show and deconstructing it and its key elements piece by piece?
A piece about how mental illness was/is and can be confused as paranormal activity is actually some evil plan to discredit the whole ritual and mock religion? Awesome.
It would also be utmost irony as Merry's alter ego is someone who is typing to be a feminist, pointing fingers at patriarchy and other stuff (take that conservatives!), but its purpose would be the same one that conservatives and religious groups say: discredit and destroy the family, morals, religion, etc. And that would make them right, if it is a possessed Merry subverting the system (take that progressists!)
The freezing scene at the ending also refers to how Marjorie was cold at the exorcism. And if I remember correctly, she went to meet Rachel with her red piece of cloth that she used when she was playing reporter with that camera. I can't figure out this meaning right now, but it's there.
And possessed Merry is foreshadowed, by Marjorie, no less:
]"After your performed the exorcism, how did you know that demon wasn't still in there, hiding? How do you know it didn't go in a hibernation state, quieting down to come out later, years and years later when no one would be around to help? Hey, how do you know if the wrong spirit left? What if you expelled the person's real spirit and only the demon's spirit was there to take its place? If I believed in any of that stuff, I'd be afraid that was going to happen to me."
Of course, this ultimate mind twist, with the possessed girl still possessed and alive at the end is just the supernatural path we are allowed to see.
We could, in the same way, come to the conclusion that Marjorie's schizophrenia simply caused all this. Remember that she spent a lot of time in the Internet, having a particular interest for families being destroyed and specially murdered by their fathers.
We know that John building a shrine and everything was a lie (if we can trust Merry, that is). The potassium cyanide couldn't be traced to John and he was doing no such thing, so it could only have been brought in by... Marjorie herself, which would surely know how to get the thing. I was buying stuff from the Internet, directly making deposits on seller's accounts at a much younger age than Marjorie.
Simply believing erroneously that their fate was gonna be the same as the terrible fates on the news she frequently read, she started her plan. A plan that didn't make any sense. Remember the reason for the reality show? Get money. The show ended and supposedly they should have received the money.
Although if they didn't, that could have made Marjorie's first plan (faking possession) worthy nothing and she feared the fate of the news she saw.
Broad speculation about this one.
Anyway, she thinks her father is mad, but also that her mother is totally unreliable and is slowly descending into madness as well, and she knows she herself hears voices in her head. So everyone is a danger to Merry, and that's why everyone, not only the father, needs to die.
Or just a symbolism for the devil "subverting and destroying the family."
And even while considering all this options, we have always to keep in mind that all the information is from Merry's POV. So the information isn't reliable.
It could just be that Merry is fed up with the three crazies and decided to get rid of them herself to get on with her life. Unlikely, but who knows. There are just too many contradictions in her own story to believe it really happened like that.
1) The jar was supposed to be brought to the police as proof of what their father was gonna do. But later Merry is saying she kept trying to make Marjorie hold the jar "like she was supposed to". Then it kept falling out as if "No, you are not gonna blame that on me". In there she had two possible culprits. The crazy father or the crazy sister.
Yeah, I know, she is 8. But if Internet stories and such are used as basis, you can Google such stuff done by kids and it's there, and much worse. We really wouldn't think of them doing such things, right?
2) The contradictory story of how her aunt was the one who arrived at the house, when it was actually the therapist and the police.
She even says "The memory of Auntie Erin coming into my bedroom, saving me, carrying me downstairs to her car... it has been reassigned, or shuffled off to be part of another more appropriate memory of the years spent living with my amazing aunt."
Wait a second. What is this "appropriate memory" of "being saved, carried downstairs to the car"? What does that mean? An episode of paranormal manifestation? Merry attempting suicide? Developing schizophrenia herself? Saving from what? She is not saying it didn't happen, she said it did happen, but later.
3) The manipulation talk, about her family and even herself to do the things they did. Nice touch. Why the devil should show his face to do his things? Or of course, a convenient excuse for the murders.
4) The fingertips on the poison jar. It is said most of the prints were "smudged and unreadable" and that the only partial they could lift belonged to Merry's father. How strange, specially considering that 1) Merry said she tried to put the jar into Marjorie's hands a lot of times and 2) She is found under the table, but no sign of the jar (when she said she was upstairs in her bedroom with it). Anyway, plenty of time for her to carry Marjorie's (or hers) original plan and make it sure that her father's prints would be the only one readable.
Yes, she is 8 and Marjorie 14, but if they researched so many things on the Internet, they would also know about fingertips.
5) Another possible explanation for the potassium cyanide: John Barret never intended to kill anyone and Marjorie also didn't buy it (she probably couldn't have, anyway).
So how the cyanide was in the house and nobody could trace the source?
It's in the beginning of the book, about John's job. He works in a factory, a toy factory.
Potassium cyanide is used for electroplating, a process primarily used to change the surface properties of an object (e.g. abrasion and wear resistance, corrosion protection, lubricity, aesthetic qualities, etc.), but may also be used to build up thickness on undersized parts or to form objects by electroforming.
There are toys who do contain very small amounts of the substance, actually.
It all combines with his work, hm? It's said he was promoted, but he still could have gotten the material from his work.
It may be a little stretchy, but it is a possibility on how the thing was there. Of course, it could as well have been for killing insects or such, although no such activity in shown in the book. So I'm guessing the toy factory segment serves to drop the hint on how the cyanide was there.
Because Marjorie could've as well bought the thing herself, as she had free access to her laptop and Internet and was easy to get it, if she wanted. The problem would be payment. Maybe she could have convinced her mother/father to pay for something she liked saying it was something else? There were eight days before the exorcism and who knows how much after the show was finished. The problem would be receiving it, unless she got it from some suicide website that could disguise the true package.
Of course, there's the priest letter "You know what you have to do", which is very convenient, to the face and also extremely unlikely, for one reason: John is very religious, and he would know that murder and suicide is a major sin.
So whether John had the cyanide from his work by some reason or Marjorie bought it, most likely her schizophrenia was affecting her too much and she thought her father was gonna kill everyone, or she simply took the news from the Internet way too seriously and came up with the plan (probably from the Internet as well).
We can't even be sure that Marjorie even came up with the plan at all, considering we can't trust Merry either, and there is that part where Marjorie urges Merry to eat, and she is smiling and all happy, as if cured and and just attempting to light the mood.
What if Merry got confused and had ended up eating too? Marjorie certainly wouldn't want that. And she didn't need to make a show either, as nobody suspected anything. Considering that, it looked like Marjorie didn't even knew what was going on.
It's also funny because the coffee shop gets all cold exactly at that part, when Merry finished telling about the cyanide and what "really" happened. A very big hint, in my opinion.
And there's yet more: The blog post about "you all wish it was a demon because it sounded cool" or something like that.
So we thinking Merry is possessed means we fell for that and are really no better than the TV show! The most likely scenario is that Merry, understandably, simply developed some mental illness of her own after all that happened.
And we are treating her the same way the show treated Marjorie and that made us despise them!
I thought giving this a 3, mostly because of the pace and for not being scary (this is classified as Horror, after all) and despite Merry being interesting.
But the ending had me mulling over for quite some time, and that is good, as most books have me closing them and moving to the next without really much deep thinking.
So it gets an extra for that. show less