Book Review: Come Closer, by Sara Gran
Aug. 1st, 2024 07:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
inverarityIs Amanda possessed, or crazy?
Soho Press, 2003, 168 pages
Generally, horror novels do not scare me. They might disturb me or gross me out or maybe unsettle me, but it's hard for me to be scared by things I don't believe in like ghosts or vampires or eldritch horrors.
This book got to me, because there are few things more genuinely terrifying to me than losing control of one's mind, or worse, watching like a spectator as something else takes control and causes you to do terrible things and lay waste to your life and relationships.
Come Closer is about demonic possession. Eventually, the demon who possesses the main character, Amanda, becomes a literal presence in the story. But while this is a supernatural thriller if read straightforwardly, you could also read it as a story about a woman descending into insanity. Is the demon Naamah real, or is the "demon" just an excuse Amanda makes up for her increasingly abhorrent actions?
Amanda begins the story as a happily married architect with a nice, if somewhat fussy and boring, husband. Things start going wrong slowly. She hears a tapping that her husband can't hear. There's a dog outside her house that seems obsessed with her. She steals a cheap lipstick from the drugstore.
Written from Amanda's perspective, the story filled me with growing dread and existential horror, as Amanda begins to realize that she's not right, that something's wrong, and eventually, becomes aware of the demon who's possessing her and even tries to seek help to rid herself of it. And yet the descriptions of her behavior remain very much rooted in her own first-person POV. She is the one who starts treating her husband contemptuously. She is the one who engages in increasingly risky behavior at work. She is the one who starts fights on the street and has sex with strangers. She is the one who, eventually, escalates to murder. She describes these acts sometimes casually, in passing, and sometimes with self-aware horror and confusion.
It's frightening and terrible, to watch her life unravel, to watch her marriage turn to ashes, to watch her turn into a monster, and there's no single point where she goes from normal to clearly possessed, but gradually the demon has more and more control over her until she is describing herself as a passenger along for the ride. Whether Naamah is real, or just how she perceives her own psychosis, she eventually loses control completely. The spiral is dark and total. This a grim read for anyone who believes in demons or who fears going mad.
I knew of Sara Gran from her Claire Dewitt series, a clever, wild romp about a lady detective who's like Nancy Drew if Nancy Drew grew up and had a drug problem. Come Closer was one of Gran's first books, and it's an unnerving and disorienting experience like her Claire Dewitt stories, except this one was scary.
Also by Sara Gran: My reviews of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, and The Infinite Blacktop.
My complete list of book reviews.
Soho Press, 2003, 168 pages
A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda - a successful architect in a happy marriage - finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.
The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane?
Generally, horror novels do not scare me. They might disturb me or gross me out or maybe unsettle me, but it's hard for me to be scared by things I don't believe in like ghosts or vampires or eldritch horrors.
This book got to me, because there are few things more genuinely terrifying to me than losing control of one's mind, or worse, watching like a spectator as something else takes control and causes you to do terrible things and lay waste to your life and relationships.
Come Closer is about demonic possession. Eventually, the demon who possesses the main character, Amanda, becomes a literal presence in the story. But while this is a supernatural thriller if read straightforwardly, you could also read it as a story about a woman descending into insanity. Is the demon Naamah real, or is the "demon" just an excuse Amanda makes up for her increasingly abhorrent actions?
Amanda begins the story as a happily married architect with a nice, if somewhat fussy and boring, husband. Things start going wrong slowly. She hears a tapping that her husband can't hear. There's a dog outside her house that seems obsessed with her. She steals a cheap lipstick from the drugstore.
Written from Amanda's perspective, the story filled me with growing dread and existential horror, as Amanda begins to realize that she's not right, that something's wrong, and eventually, becomes aware of the demon who's possessing her and even tries to seek help to rid herself of it. And yet the descriptions of her behavior remain very much rooted in her own first-person POV. She is the one who starts treating her husband contemptuously. She is the one who engages in increasingly risky behavior at work. She is the one who starts fights on the street and has sex with strangers. She is the one who, eventually, escalates to murder. She describes these acts sometimes casually, in passing, and sometimes with self-aware horror and confusion.
It's frightening and terrible, to watch her life unravel, to watch her marriage turn to ashes, to watch her turn into a monster, and there's no single point where she goes from normal to clearly possessed, but gradually the demon has more and more control over her until she is describing herself as a passenger along for the ride. Whether Naamah is real, or just how she perceives her own psychosis, she eventually loses control completely. The spiral is dark and total. This a grim read for anyone who believes in demons or who fears going mad.
I knew of Sara Gran from her Claire Dewitt series, a clever, wild romp about a lady detective who's like Nancy Drew if Nancy Drew grew up and had a drug problem. Come Closer was one of Gran's first books, and it's an unnerving and disorienting experience like her Claire Dewitt stories, except this one was scary.
Also by Sara Gran: My reviews of Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, Claire DeWitt and the Bohemian Highway, and The Infinite Blacktop.
My complete list of book reviews.
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no subject
Date: 2024-08-02 03:30 pm (UTC)The black and red cover and the mentioning of "pointed teeth" makes me think this story contains a female vampire (maybe in the tradition of Carmilla), but does it? Or does the demon just happens to have pointed teeth?
no subject
Date: 2024-08-02 03:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-03 07:01 am (UTC)Sounds interesting
Date: 2024-08-03 08:31 am (UTC)Re: Sounds interesting
Date: 2024-08-06 11:41 am (UTC)