The Lead Up To An Exorcism (The Exorcist book review)

 

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

This book is brought to you by the letter ‘w’, as in ‘weird’ and ‘what the hell’.

I would’ve pegged this book initially as a thriller or suspense or mystery after reading the beginning. There’s turmoil for the main character between juggling her job, her friends, her employees, and a daughter. The story is compelling and immediately pulled me in. Then, from left field, the daughter is urinating on the floor. Return to motherly concern and educated doctors, then suddenly her kid is swearing and masturbating. A detective, employee backstories, a priest’s life, and then daughter fucking herself with a crucifix. This book going from 0 to 100 gave me whiplash. That being said, I had no question on the genre once I got to these later scenes with Regan.

Note: I actually was streaming listening to this with some friends, and one of them joined right before the masturbation scene and later remarked, ‘Why do I always come in when the cursed shit happens?’ Poor unsuspecting boy.

Now, I knew vaguely of the premise of The Exorcist, but I have not seen the movie and don’t know anything about the case it’s based on. (Yes, Alexis, I do live under a log aka pine trees.) This let me go into the book with blind eyes, which I think honestly was a good thing. I didn’t have any expectation to see a ton of Pazuzu, so the lead in of seeing only glimpses through Regan was good build up.

Honestly, much like The Exorcism of Emily Rose, the story wasn’t really about the exorcism. We get the demonic symptoms and back and forth between contemplating mental illness or not. But only when we reach Part III do we finally get confirmation of the priest looking for evidence to get approval for an exorcism (not even the exorcism itself). I thought the book was much more like Emily Rose in its focus on mental illness versus paranormal/religious influence as seen through the point-of-view of the mother and the priest. Let it be noted that when Karras did the trick with saying he had holy water and it was just from the tap, I not only called that would happen, but I adored that it happened. But Karl was my favorite character. Honestly, the side characters were much more interesting to me than the demons and Regan.

Honestly, pacing and vulgarity were my only criticisms in this book, and the vulgarity was a personal preference that I think did exactly what the author intended in writing in the horror genre. It made me uncomfortable. It got an emotional reaction out of me. So good on Blatty. That aside, I did enjoy this book. It was certainly a weird one, something I normally wouldn’t pick up on my own, but it did linger in my mind after finishing it.

Overall: It was an interesting book and I’m definitely going to give the movie a watch to compare the two.