Helpful Score: 3
In one word? Creepy. The hair on my arms would regularly stand on end reading this book, but it's very well written, in no way a "popular fiction" novel. This is good literature mixed with a suspenseful, puzzling, (well, creepy again) plot.
I felt compelled to read this novel without stopping on a few occasions. I lived with these characters for three days and it was quite an experience. Reminded me a bit of Jonathan Carroll, maybe some Edgar Allen Poe.
Dim and foreboding, the book immediately gets its claws into you. It's a bit fantastical yet believable with the ol' suspension of disbelief. I can honestly say this story scared me. Prepare to be stunned, hit by a few waves, you won't forget this one.
I felt compelled to read this novel without stopping on a few occasions. I lived with these characters for three days and it was quite an experience. Reminded me a bit of Jonathan Carroll, maybe some Edgar Allen Poe.
Dim and foreboding, the book immediately gets its claws into you. It's a bit fantastical yet believable with the ol' suspension of disbelief. I can honestly say this story scared me. Prepare to be stunned, hit by a few waves, you won't forget this one.
Helpful Score: 2
from armchairinterviews.com
Justin Evans' debut novel, A Good and Happy Child, is an intelligent and highly sophisticated psychological thriller.
George Davies has a problem--he cannot bring himself to touch or interact with his newborn son. To salvage his relationship with his confused and frightened wife, George goes to therapy. During these therapy sessions, George confesses to his doctor he has been in therapy before; however, when asked why he had been in treatment, George seems unable--or unwilling--to answer. Giving George a notebook, the doctor suggests he write as much as he can remember about his past problems.
What emerges in George's notebooks is a nightmarish cocktail of childhood fear, loneliness, and evil. In them, George writes that his father died when he was eleven, and that three months later, George became possessed with a demon, the same demon that had caused his father's death.
As the adult George remembers and writes about the terror and uncertainty his eleven-year-old self faced, his grip on the present begins to slip, threatening to push him back into a past he has, until now, successfully smothered.
The novel's narrative switches between the older George, who speaks directly to his therapist in the book, and George's notebooks, in which he records the events and experiences of the younger George struggling to come to terms with his belief that he has been possessed by evil.
A Good and Happy Child is a gem of a novel: its writing is quiet and assured, maintaining throughout a deceptive calmness that paradoxically magnifies the horrific memories George calmly records in his notebooks. Without relying on the physical or sexual violence that many thrillers use to ratchet up suspense, A Good and Happy Child manages to terrify using only the terrain of the mind--sometimes the most frightening place of all.
Armchair Interviews says: This is an intelligent psychological thriller that crescendos to a startling conclusion, and will leave you sleeping with the lights on.
Justin Evans' debut novel, A Good and Happy Child, is an intelligent and highly sophisticated psychological thriller.
George Davies has a problem--he cannot bring himself to touch or interact with his newborn son. To salvage his relationship with his confused and frightened wife, George goes to therapy. During these therapy sessions, George confesses to his doctor he has been in therapy before; however, when asked why he had been in treatment, George seems unable--or unwilling--to answer. Giving George a notebook, the doctor suggests he write as much as he can remember about his past problems.
What emerges in George's notebooks is a nightmarish cocktail of childhood fear, loneliness, and evil. In them, George writes that his father died when he was eleven, and that three months later, George became possessed with a demon, the same demon that had caused his father's death.
As the adult George remembers and writes about the terror and uncertainty his eleven-year-old self faced, his grip on the present begins to slip, threatening to push him back into a past he has, until now, successfully smothered.
The novel's narrative switches between the older George, who speaks directly to his therapist in the book, and George's notebooks, in which he records the events and experiences of the younger George struggling to come to terms with his belief that he has been possessed by evil.
A Good and Happy Child is a gem of a novel: its writing is quiet and assured, maintaining throughout a deceptive calmness that paradoxically magnifies the horrific memories George calmly records in his notebooks. Without relying on the physical or sexual violence that many thrillers use to ratchet up suspense, A Good and Happy Child manages to terrify using only the terrain of the mind--sometimes the most frightening place of all.
Armchair Interviews says: This is an intelligent psychological thriller that crescendos to a startling conclusion, and will leave you sleeping with the lights on.
