Derek Quinlan looks at A Head Full of Ghosts and the tropes of Horror

A Head Full of Ghosts is a book that seems to be on everyone's 'To Read' this year. And it is definitely one of Derek Quinlan's favourites from the year just gone. It is a horror novel, and one of the scariest I have read in a long, long while. Stephen King tweet a few months past that it was the scariest thing he had read all year, which is a display of just how unnerving and thrilling this novel really is. So what has so many people terrified? And why are so many horror fans proclaiming it as a work of genius?

On the surface, A Head Full of Ghosts is fairly standard horror fare. The plot concerns a standard suburban New England family, who are torn apart when one of the daughters begins to display signs of schizophrenia, her display begins to scare her parents and younger sister Merry, the main character, to the point where they think she is being possessed. This is the basic story, and if that sounds a lot like the famous film The Exorcist (another Derek Quinlan favourite) it's because it's meant to, this is a novel for horror fans through and through, and there are a myriad of references to other horror staples throughout.