My love of unreliable narrators has drawn me towards books about possession. The best of them, like A Head Full of Ghosts, tread the line between psychological thriller and horror to keep us guessing about what’s real. Or they go full supernatural, like The Exorcist, and deliver terrifying stories pack with pathos. Lindsay King-Miller’s This is My Body is more on The Exorcist end of the spectrum but, unfortunately, falls short of the mark.
Brigid is doing her best to hold things together. She’s a single mother. She’s a small business owner. She’s carrying a lot of childhood trauma. Her facade starts to crack when she gets a call from her daughter Dylan’s school, informing her that Dylan has punched her former best friend. Like Brigid, I was on Dylan’s side when I learned that there were some things going on with the friend that justified the punch. But then more sinister things start to happen: an aborted magic ritual, further violence, and the awful things Brigid finds in her daughter’s closet.
King-Miller makes it clear early on that Dylan is possessed. This is not a teenager acting out. And that’s when Brigid makes her big mistake. Because she cannot think of anything else to do, Brigid takes Dylan to her uncle, the man who made her childhood so awful that Brigid is determined to take her trauma to the grave. This man, Father Angus, is the only person she knows who can perform an exorcism.
This is My Body does some fascinating things with shame, religious trauma, and demons, but I feel that a lot of it was rushed. What makes books about possession and/or books about unreliable narrators so interesting to me is the slow burn. I want clues and red herrings to mentally gnaw on as I puzzle out what’s really going on. This is My Body races past the doubts about whether or not something supernatural is afoot to get to an admittedly exciting climax. I enjoyed the hell out of the last third of the novel (‘scuz the pun), but I would’ve liked a more robust introduction and rising action.