Customer Reviews

A Good and Happy Child: A Novel

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The cover of A GOOD AND HAPPY CHILD is the tipoff. Fashioned after a woodcut picturing demonic possession/abduction, it is grotesque enough to give one a bit of a start --- my nine-year-old daughter would make a large avoidant circle around any table where the book happened to be --- and certainly portends what is to come in this thoughtful literary thriller by debut author Justin Evans.

Thirty-year-old George Davies is a new father who cannot bring himself to hold his newborn son. Needless to say, this causes some consternation on the part of Davies's wife, who strikes one as a bit of a no-nonsense harpy even under the best of circumstances. With some prodding, Davies goes to therapy, a process that slowly awakens his childhood memories from two decades ago. At the instigation of his therapist, Davies begins writing journal entries concerning the mysterious death of his father and what occurred afterward, including an appearance of a boy his age who, against all odds, wanted to be his friend and seemed to know his deepest, most secret thoughts --- not to mention a prescient, omnipresent knowledge of what was going on around him.

As Davies's behavior becomes more unrestrained and erratic, his mother believes it is a natural if unfortunate grief reaction to the loss of his dad. Yet associates of Davies's late father see a more sinister force behind what is occurring, not only with young Davies but also with respect to his father's premature demise, a supernatural force that means to take possession of Davies's very soul --- with consequences that will affect him dramatically both as a child and as an adult.

Evans's background is in the business strategy and development arena, and the well-structured development of this fine and frightening work will keep you guessing throughout and after your reading. He raises questions that normally lay slumbering behind doors, which self-styled educated people rarely if ever open, and the disturbing awakening makes this debut all the more impressive. A GOOD AND HAPPY CHILD is a fine and memorable opener.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

"My mother, at that time, was like two women trussed together, like rosebushes my father tied to a single stake to make them look more full."

What a writer. Compelling suspense told with a poet's sensibility. I can't wait to read more.

"A Good and Happy Child" opens in Manhattan, where thirty-year-old George Davies is about to revisit his nightmarish past. He is an only child, his parents are dead, and he has just become a new father after four years of marriage. However, much to his wife's consternation, George cannot bring himself to hold his own baby. Just the thought of picking up the little boy fills him with boundless anxiety. George's wife is horrified. "How could she stay married to a man who couldn't care for his own child?" In desperation, George visits a psychiatrist named Dr. Surman to help him get to the root of his problems.

George begins to recall events from his early years growing up as the son of college professors in the Bible Belt town of Preston, Virginia. In 1982, at the age of eleven, George was a pudgy and nerdy kid, the butt of teasing by classroom bullies. His father, Paul, died after contracting a mysterious illness in Honduras, and the boy is worried that his mother will find another man to replace his dad. Among the candidates is Tom Harris, Paul's best friend, who has a doctorate from Harvard, but who is physically unkempt and harbors some strange ideas about religion. When George sees a disembodied face staring at him in the shower one day, he faints. His mother, Joan, calls her friend, psychologist Clarissa Bing, for a referral. However, in spite of visits with his therapist, Richard Manning, George continues to see his "Friend," who may be a demon or simply a figment of his overactive and troubled imagination. As time passes, George suffers from headaches, sleeplessness, anxiety, and eventually panic. The "demon" is putting unpleasant ideas in his head, and these ideas lead to tragic outcomes that may or may not be George's doing.

Justin Evans is a craftsman whose highly literate prose style is smooth, precise, and beautifully descriptive. His off-beat plot is disturbing and ambiguous; it is not always clear what is really going on as the author reenacts George's past with vivid and terrifying flashbacks. Is the protagonist a delusional young man with a "shadow self," an evil twin who embodies his repressed desires? Or is there a supernatural explanation for the strange events that have left him paralyzed and miserable? Now that he is an adult, George is terrified that a force that he cannot control will prevent him from being a responsible parent, a person able to raise "a good and happy child." George's psychiatrist disdains otherworldly explanations: "There are no monsters out there, George."

In our age of literal-mindedness and cynicism, do we dare entertain the possibility of demonic possession? Justin Evans challenges his readers to throw off the shackles of reason and open up our minds to the frightening possibility that, as Shakespeare said, "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio/ Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." "A Good and Happy Child" is an original and disturbing work of fiction about a man who must choose either to surrender to the unseen forces that are controlling him or to fight for his self-respect, his family, and his sanity.

I enjoyed parts of the book very much. The writing style was interesting, it definitely drew me in. There were some less interesting parts but none the less I got through it quite quickly. I hated the end.

Sometimes I'm okay with an iffy ending, or an open-ended ending, or any other term or terms which might be used to describe a somewhat unsatisfying ending. In this case I was not. It kept bothering me for days after finishing the book. Unfortunately the end almost, but not quite, left me wishing I'd never picked it up. However, I'll probably still keep an eye out for this author's next book.

Definitely gripping, this story will grab you and keep you from beginning to end. No question about that. On the other hand, it wasn't well written enough to be called great literature and yet it wasn't scary enough to end up in the Stephen King pile. George, the protagonist, is a well-drawn character but he reports on memories as seen by an 11 year old that are well-beyond the scope and breath of the way a child would ever see or remember his life. I did feel all the characters were quite nicely developed and the plot was not at all predictable. I never knew how it would end which was both satisfying and exciting. But I never cared that much for any one character to be enthralled or emotionally involved in how the story turned out. All that being said, I read this book over Labor Day weekend and barely did anything else. I almost loved it...but not quite.

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans is a literary thriller about George Davies and his forgotten past. George should be happy, he loves his wife and newborn son, but instead he's visiting a psychologist because he is unable to touch the baby. He watches his son with fear that grows into panic attacks and causes tension in his marriage. George starts journalling his childhood encounter with a psychologist, and as the story unfurls on the pages, his life quickly spirals downward. After Little George's father dies, he starts seeing visions of a doppleganger and hearing voices whispering the secret of his father's death. The past and the present collide in George's son. Evans has a way with words that draws the reader into strong empathy with George. He describes he and his wife after an argument as bumper cars with road rage. The empathy only grows as young George faces nightmare after catastrophe. You can't help but ache for this child trying to cope with grief and loss. Three friends of his father's encourage George to believe that the visions he's seeing are demons. The friends come across as "true believers" with every frightening connotation associated with that term. I ricocheted between believing George's account of the action and not trusting him at all. Evans manages to make this dizzying tale work right up to the final powerful image. Don't read this book alone or late at night; once you start, you can't put it down!

I had high hopes for this book after reading so many rave reviews. I was disappointed. The book deals with George Davies, a man unable or unwilling to hold his baby son, and delves into his demon haunted childhood. Was the demon real, imagined, or the product of a psychologically troubled mind? The book led me to only one possible conclusion, but the author seemed to not know where to go. The ending, as some reviewers have pointed out, is a little open-ended, but I think that was the point. It makes you decide what really happened and imagine the future for the characters involved.

If you are looking for a fright-fest, do not buy this book. If you want to read an interesting tale of a child gone awry, give it a shot.