Genre: Horror Novella Published: Titan Books, October 2024
My Rating: 5/5 stars
“There is a stillness here, though not in the way that a church is still, or a meadow, or a shore. It is a place that has intention – an interior built for humans, wholly unoccupied by them. A place that has been here a long time. Big, with function, for people, but devoid of any life and imbuing the space with a mild perception of wrongness.”
Despite being very excited for this novella, based off its synopsis and early praise, I wasn’t expecting it to impact me to the extent that it did. In only 144 pages, Coup de Grace manage to put my emotions through a wringer. Horrifying but beautiful, literary but visceral, alienating and deeply relatable, melancholic and strangely poetic… all words to describe this book in contradicting, but equally fitting ways.
The Story
Coup de Grace tells the story of a man on his way to his planned death. Literally… Vicken has suffered from mental health problems for years now and has decided that he has reached his limits. Today he’ll take the metro to the riverside and throw himself in the river to end it all. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station. Trapped in a liminal network of never-ending, completely abandoned subway stations, seemingly existing outside of time and space, Vicken is confronted with the horrors of this maze, as well as the horrors within his own mind.
What I loved:
Reminiscent of the likes of Piranesi and a little bit of House of Leaves, I loved how the author managed to create an entire setting that perfectly mirrors the content and themes of his story. Coup de Grace is about loneliness, isolation, liminality and the way that grief and mental illness can completely cut you off and alienate you from your own life and the people around you. Through almost poetic prose, Sophia Ajram creates a story that feels almost feverlike, dissociative and alienating, whilst also capturing the exact horrors that I feel people who’ve suffered from depression will recognize. There are few “classic scares”; no zombies, monsters or ghouls to be found on these pages. The terror here is more psychological, more existential… It’s within the creeping of the endless walls of a maze of sorrow and isolation, and within the slow decay of the familiar around you, until everything feels unreal and hostile.
It's difficult to argue that I loved this book. As someone who’s experienced deep depression, this was a little too close for comfort at times in its capturing of my liminal memories of that time. Yet there’s no denying the quality that went into penning this book and capturing that experience so well.
I’m not usually the kind of reviewer to open their review with a bunch of trigger warnings, but I’m making an exception here. If you or someone close to you is currently suffering from depression, anxiety, suicidality or another type of mental health crisis, this might not be the book to read right now… It’s bleak, it’s melancholic and although it’s beautifully written, it doesn’t hold back. Proceed at your own discretion. Personally, I’d recommend saving this one for when you’re in a stable mind-space, when it’s less likely to trigger- and more likely to resonate in a helpful way.
Find this book here on Goodreads.
