My Favourite Books: No.1 - The Exorcist

Hi folks, I was getting a bit bored so I thought I would write a post about some of my favorite books. That thought expanded and I figured I’d write a post on each of the books. That way I could create multiple posts and not restrict myself to itsy-bitsy and hurried descriptions. Well, here goes. The first in the list, a timeless classic:

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

An epic of a novel, but not in terms of size (I’ll come to those later). Not very well known, but this book is the one that the famous movie has been based upon. And who hasn’t heard of the movie. Only someone living in a cave probably, ‘coz even if someone is not a fan of horror flicks they still would have heard a mention of this movie.

The story deals with the possession of a young girl by a demon. Regan, the girl in question, starts playing with an Ouija board and soon becomes ill. She is plagued by poltergeist-phenomena which she blames on Captain Howdy, who she claims is the person she has been communicating with using the board. Initially Captain Howdy is very friendly but soon he begins abusing her and eventually possesses her body. Her mother, Chris, is worried by the signs that her daughter is showing and takes her to a psychiatrist.

After conducting several tests on her, he is unable to find anything wrong that he is able to explain. But during the tests Regan undergoes disturbing psychological and physical changes, which shock the psychiatrist. After several unsuccessful psychiatric and medical treatments, he suggests that Regan be exorcised by a Catholic priest.

Chris is in shock and disbelieves him at first. But she quickly reconsiders when the thing that her daughter has become confesses to committing the murder of a friend of hers. She approaches Father Damien Karras who is a priest in the local church. He is extremely skeptical when she asks him to perform an exorcism on her daughter. He quickly changes his mind when he visits the girl and is confronted by its power. He applies for permission to perform the exorcism and is assigned to assist Father Merrin, a senior priest in the Jesuit order and more experienced in such matters.

What follows is a gut-wrenching chronicle of the horrors of the exorcism performed by the priests. They have to battle against the demon, both physically and spiritually. Father Karras, who has lost his mother recently, is forced to question his faith. Eventually, after a long battle the priests manage to overcome the demon, but at the cost of their own lives.

The part I liked best was the description of the strength, behavior, and powers of the demon. They made me feel as though I was in the room with the two priests, smelling the fear, adrenaline, and vomit. In fact, this was one of the few books that really took my breath away. It still gives me goose bumps when I recall a part where Regan crawls down the stairs upside-down on her hands and legs, imitating a spider.

I must admit that after reading this particular book, for several days afterwards, I was too scared to put my feet on the floor afraid that something was going to grab it from under the bed. For me that is the true mark of a horror novel. It must create fear in the readers to the extent that they have to always recall some particular scene even while going about some ordinary task and imagine what would happen if they were in that particular scenario in those circumstances. Chills rise in me even as I write about this masterpiece. This is what I consider a classic work of art (yes, A-R-T, art) to beat all the new authors, what with all their scribbling on what they call ‘new-age fears’, ‘modern nemeses’ and other fancy lingo for stuff that would have been kicked out of a college-level Creative Writing competition.

This is one book that is not to be missed at any cost, especially by fans of the movie.

P.S. The pics here are from the movie.