A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans has sat on one of the shelves of my home library for the past twelve years. I intended to read it upon purchase, but other books arrived and this novel of psychological horror fell farther down the reading list eventually being stabled on a bookcase and forgotten.
Which is too bad, because this is some top-notch scary stuff.
George Davies is a new father who cannot hold his infant son. His wife is at her wit's end. George visits a therapist in an attempt to save his marriage. Most of the narrative takes place as we read through a series of notebooks that the therapist challenges George to keep.
Eleven-year-old George Davies is an intellectually precocious kid dealing with the recent death of his father. When a demon visits George "all hell breaks loose." This is the same demon that supposedly killed his father.
Ultimately, we get different explanations for the presence of this demon—an actual demon that needs to be exorcised, command auditory hallucinations of a young mind in meltdown, or a child grieving the death of his father and his mind trying to make sense of it all—and the ramifications of trying to keep this demon at bay.
We meet various experts and authority figures trying to deal with George and his Friend—family members, church officials and practitioners, and psychologists, therapists, and medical personnel.
It's a compelling read and one that I found difficult to put down. And the ending... Oh. Dear. God.
Maybe I'll sleep with the lights on tonight. Highly recommended.
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