Leah Polcar's Reviews > Confrontation with Evil: An In-Depth Review of the 1949 Possession that Inspired The Exorcist

Confrontation with Evil is meant to give the true life story of the true life story behind the story that inspired The Exorcist. LaChance presents an interesting take on the story of the possession of Roland Doe, but if you haven't already read Allen's Possessed: True Story of An Exorcism or another account of Roland's story, you will be somewhat lost by LaChance's interpretation. It was unclear to me throughout Confrontation with Evil whether LaChance assumed readers should already know about Roland's case and thus be appreciative he was not boring us with all the details again or whether LaChance really just needs to study up on how to write a non-fiction book. Even if it is the former, there is still a bit of a problem here that unless you have committed all this to memory or otherwise are so deeply involved with this origin story that you remember every detail, it is really easy to get lost, but I think it is really the latter. LaChance wants to make an argument here, but he doesn't seem to know how to do that. The text is generally disorganized and the underlying argumentation is not coherent.

For example, LaChance places a lot of blame on the mother of Ronald, and when you understand the actual story, some of this seem warranted, but he gives a blow by blow blaming fest without the actual facts to support such a thing. I would have rather he decided to detail the story and overlay his opinions as most non-fiction writers do. Likewise, when he decides to go all gung-ho on blaming everyone for not acknowledging how St. Micheal the Archangel appeared to defend Roland it would be interesting to hear that this actually happened to begin with – or at least how it appeared to people.

The book itself is probably worth it however for the weird, almost appendix-like chapters, describing the places where Roland was treated (and exorcised) and where maybe, just maybe, a priest associated with the exorcism was kept (view spoiler)[ until his death where freaky shit is happening like every minute and THIS is the book LaChance needs to write (hide spoiler)].

Ultimate vote: Pass if you haven't read anything about this whole thing to begin with because you won't know what is happening; Read it for those who know something about the case because when he lays into the mom is kind of interesting – and that creepy shit about the hospital is sort of killer; Generally, petition the author to really write a book about his experiences on the weird time-stopped priest floor because wtf!

Thank you Lleweyllen Publishing, Stephen LaChance, and NetGalley for giving me the chance to read this.