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27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A great debut novel and a combination of horror, psychological terror and mystery, May 24, 2007
This review is from: A Good and Happy Child: A Novel (Hardcover)
You really can't go wrong with this one if you like fiction that keeps you guessing while making your heart race as the suspense builds. I found it VERY hard to believe this was the author's first book since it has the hallmarks of a more experienced author...but a debut novel it is.
This one will have you wondering about the line between pyschosis and true visionaries and mystics, as well as whether demonic possession is actually occurring here. The plot alternates between past and present, as George Davies, age 30, remembers a very odd childhood and the "friend" who came to visit him then, setting off a tragic series of events.
Author Justin Evans makes George Davies believable, both in his boyhood years as well as his adult life, where old fears resurface after the birth of his first son. I read this one in one day, not pausing except when I had to. This works on so many levels and it deserves the many starred reviews it received. This is a promising author and I intend to keep an eye out for more of his books. I can't wait to read them.
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26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
An ambiguous case of demonic possession, February 24, 2008
This review is from: A Good and Happy Child: A Novel (Hardcover)
A Good and Happy Child is a well-written, always interesting and at times suspenseful tale of demonic possession -sort of. There is a deliberate (I assume) ambiguity throughout the novel, culminating in an ending so open-ended that it's almost as though the novel should have had an additional section. In Justin Evans' novel, George, the narrator, tells the story both as an eleven year old boy and as a troubled married man. In the latter, he is being treated by a psychologist because he is unable to touch his young child. In his early years, we gradually learn, George was possessed by a demon, who also attacked, and possibly killed, his father.
On the other hand, all of this may be a psychological condition motivated by grief and anger regarding his late father.
The book interested me enough that I gave some thought to the author's motives and intentions. What I concluded is that the the book's extreme ambiguity is not so much a literary or intellectual device as a sort of failure of nerve on the author's part. The novel sets up a radical division of beliefs, between George's mother and her intellectual, secular friends and his father and *his* friends, who are also intellectual, but in a religious way. When George begins having problems, such as hearing voices and seeing another young boy who is not real (unless he's a demon, that is), he gets caught in the middle of this ideological crossfire. In what I'd have to choose as my favorite passage in the novel, George gets some very good advice from Kurt, Georges' mother's new boyfriend. Kurt tells him that he doesn't have to choose sides, that part of growing up is finding your own "side." In other words, George does not have to accept either the radical secularism or the religious zealotry of either parent. If the book had succeeded in driving home this point, I would have admired it a lot more.
For me, the book's ambiguity is not quite honest. It seemed pretty clear to me by the end that, in the novel's world view, demons are real. There are simply too many events that occur, especially a horrific one near the very end, that cannot be explained scientifically. This suggests to me that Evans really endorses the beliefs of George's father, and his friends Tom Harris, Freddie and Clarissa, who wish to perform an exorcism to expel the demon. Now these characters all espouse a very traditional, almost fundamentalist Christian view. They are essentially Medievalists who believe the world has been in decline since the Church lost its dominant position in society. Considering all of the atrocities committed by the Church in the name of stamping out evil, this is a position that many readers (myself included) could find disturbing. It also makes it understandable why Evans felt the need to backpedal from endorsing this view. However, it remains the case that the story does in fact support this religious position.
It is no small credit to the author that I would discuss a thriller/suspense novel in such terms. In shows that he succeeds in raising some fairly deep theological issues. With a novel like The Exorcist, for example, you can put your beliefs to the side and just get engrossed in the action. The same is true for most horror books and films. This one, however, raises the stakes by taking on a serious matter -namely, the historic struggle between religion and modern secularism. I don't think it entirely succeeds in this, but it was an engrossing and thought-provoking read all the same. The abrupt and inconclusive ending, however, left me less than satisfied.
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent storytelling, but not scary, June 13, 2007
This review is from: A Good and Happy Child: A Novel (Hardcover)
This novel is so well written it was a real pleasure to read. The author created extremely vivid and believable characters and painted remarkably detailed, almost Dickensian pictures of people, scenes, and events. I think this example illustrates his great talent for evoking visual images with few words: "Emotions swept his features like one of those time-elapse shots of weather streaking across a sky."
Just like another reviewer here, I read about this novel in Parade magazine and was lured by how terrifying it was said to be. And just like her, I kept waiting for the really scary parts. While I was totally engrossed with the story, by the time I had 50 pages left, I became preoccupied wondering how the direction it was going in could result in something truly frightening in the "horror genre" sense.
I think marketing this book as Horror and calling it "incredibly scary," as one blurb on the back cover says, sets up an unfair expectation. Even though the novel ends up being much more satisfying and thought-provoking than a formulaic beach read like a Dean Koontz, sometimes you just WANT a good scare and not a lot of angsty subtext and ambiguity. Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't, so don't give me an Almond Joy when you promised me a Mounds, if you know what I mean.
But that's certainly not the author's fault, nor is the subsequent fact that a reader may expect the sort of chills she got reading The Exorcist, when this story veers to the same subject matter.
Don't read this book for "sleep with the light on" cheap thrills and chills. Read it because George is a compelling character who will draw you into his troubled world and have you worrying, suffering, scheming, and doubting reality right along with him.
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