Review: The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty

There can't be a person alive who doesn't know about The Exorcist.

Even if they have never seen the film or read the book, anybody's grandmother could reel off some of the iconic images featured in both - spinning heads, projectile vomit, hellish bellowing voices and that scene with the crucifix going somewhere it shouldn't.

I saw the film several years ago and I don't remember that much about it, but I do recall not feeling particularly scared. Not that it wasn't scary, just that I think The Exorcist as an entity had already been so indelibly burned into my consciousness by a steady drip-drip of references for years beforehand - I'd seen the clips, heard the music, endured certain film critics discussing it at length - that by the time I came to see it, it was already familiar to me.

I already knew that it was brash, hard, in yer face and incredibly graphic, so there was very little shock value to it when I eventually saw the film for myself. And the same goes for the book. I expected to see those horrific scenes written down and that's what I got.

Which, in a strange way, had an anaesthetising effect on me as a reader. I knew the possessed 12-year-old girl at the heart of it would swear like a docker, would do revolting things, would suggest what priests could do with the Devil's private member. I knew it was all coming and so, combined with the rather casual way in which the story is told, it all rather rolled over me.

And that's bizarre, because The Exorcist is an incredibly disturbing story. Having reminded myself in detail of what Regan got up to, I am freshly astonished that a child was ever cast in the movie. Yet it is written as pulpy entertainment and in that sense, it scores, despite subject matter that should be shocking readers out of their armchairs and into the letters page of the Daily Mail.

Blatty does write well and manages to draw some colourful characters, from the insufferable detective investigating a bizarre murder below Regan's bedroom window, to the careworn and desperate Father Karras, who is reluctantly drawn into a battle with the demon. There are pretentious touches to his writing which seem incongruous in such a balls-out horror story, and these little touches of literary flair do fall on stony ground I'm afraid. Enough of the 'thin as a whispered hope' nonsense, get to the bit where she twists that bloke's head off!

And that pretty much sums up this experience. I wasn't alive when this book was first published in 1971, so I can't testify as to its reception, but I'd be surprised if certain sections of society weren't practically bursting in the street with outrage. It's certainly not something I'd allow any child of mine to read until they were old enough to not be titillated by the copious cursing and graphic sexual references.

But you know what? It didn't move me. And I hope to God that just says something about how 21st century consumers are being desensitised by the images of horror, both real and fictional, that they see every day, and not about me as a person.