A Good and Happy Child

by Justin Evans in Audio Format

I was expecting a different story but still couldn't take it out of my CD player, I just had to know what happens to the main character, George Davies. At the start of the story we meet George as an adult, a new father who for reasons unknown to even him, cannot hold his newborn son. Soon the narrative changes to the journals his doctor encourages him to write. They chart his childhood as the only child of two academics, his trauma's begin when his father dies mysteriously on the other side of the world. George soon sees a figure, one who resembles himself but dirtier and unlike George, conscienceless and just a little bit evil. Soon George is convinced by the spirit that someone close to their family is responsible for his fathers death and he or the figure, we don't quite know which, acts accordingly. The person survives the car crash caused by his brakes being disabled; but soon he and others convince George that he is possessed by an evil spirit. Throughout the book all sorts of adults influence George, his mother, her new boyfriend, his godfather, his late father's best friend, even psychiatrists who eventually decide he needs involuntary commitment to a mental hospital. By the time everyone is done with him I'm amazed he doesn't just run off and live alone in a cave somewhere. The book is very engrossing the character of George is so well written I hated to leave him when the story was done, but like all books they must end.