And I feel stupid.
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay is about a family with a troubled teen daughter. The book is written to make you wonder if Marjorie, the older daughter, is possessed or if she is mentally unstable. Is the cure science or religion?
Throughout, it is stated numerous times that one of the rooms has yellow wallpaper. The book really wants you to know that it has yellow wallpapers. A book about mentally ill/demonically possessed girl takes place in a house with yellow wallpapers, get it? But in case you didn't get it, towards the end, one of the character literally explains to you, the reader, the significance of the yellow wallpaper, pointing out all similarities.
At that point, I was pretty annoyed with Tremblay. Like, oh I bet you thought you were being so subtle, but you were beating us on the head with it the whole time, and you thought you were so clever you just had to let us know how clever you were being.
And then the ending. And I'm like wait…
The other sister's name is Merry! In the beginning Marjorie really stresses to Merry that she has to remember the story about the growing thing (vines)! In the final blog, Karen describes the house as being castle like! Angry neighbors. Paranoid father. Two sisters. Was there a cat? Did I miss a cat reference? I just checked, in the beginning, Merry the Cat. Of course.
I thought Tremblay was being very obvious, but now I think he threw in a bunch of red herrings. I got distracted by all the horror book/movie/song references and the super obvious The Yellow Wallpaper reference and completely missed the most important, all the We Have Always Lived in the Castle references.
by Anxious-Fun8829