Synopsis:
Vicken has a plan: throw himself into the Saint Lawrence River in Montreal and end it all for good, believing it to be the only way out for him after a lifetime of depression and pain. But, stepping off the subway, he finds himself in an endless, looping station.
Determined to find a way out again, he starts to explore the rooms and corridors ahead of him. But no matter how many claustrophobic hallways or vast cathedral-esque rooms he passes through, the exit is nowhere in sight.
The more he explores his strange new prison, the more he becomes convinced that he hasn’t been trapped there accidentally, and amongst the shadows and concrete, he comes to realise that he almost certainly is not alone.
Review:
“Coup de Grâce,” by Sofia Ajram is a harrowing, introspective, kaleidoscopic descent into the dark tunnels of the human psyche. This novella may be compact in size (I read it cover to cover last night) but looms large in concept (Ajram has frazzled my brain in a single sitting). It’s claustrophobic, unnerving, existential, brutal but achingly beautiful, wholly original, absurdly funny, and above all, fucking devastating. I appreciate that’s a lot of adjectives, but they’re ALL warranted. It’s Kafka meets Lynch meets Dante, all mashed together in the depths of the Montreal Metro, and I can’t stop thinking about it. If you’re looking for a one way ticket to utter heart-break and semi-permanent emotional ruin, “Coup de Grâce,” is the book for you. This novella has been on my radar since it was announced, thank you Titan books for sending me a copy. It will devastate readers across the globe from October 1st.
Vicken Asatryan is done. Fed up by the homogeneity and hopelessness of life, and wanting to end it all, he boards the metro, for what he sincerely hopes will be the last time. When he dismounts, to his utter confusion, he finds his plan has been stumped: the station has no exit. Each room simply leads to another, and try as he might, the metal turnstiles that once allowed him entry, refuse him a way out. He finds himself trapped in a concrete, monolithic, endlessly winding hellscape, disoriented, despondent, and helpless as ever.
I first encountered Sofia Ajram’s writing in early 2023, and have been captivated ever since. While I knew her work was impressive, Coup de Grâce takes his prose to an entirely new dimension. The writing in this novella is a force unto itself, oscillating masterfully between the clinical and the poetic, forever on the cusp of profound revelation or complete mental breakdown… perhaps both. Every word is meticulously chosen to unsettle, disturb, and push readers to confront their discomfort. Sofia wields her language like a scalpel, cutting with precision to the very core and exposing raw and throbbing nerves. Aside from being truly experimental in its concept, reading like a suburban, commercialised “When Darkness Loves Us,” (Elizabeth Engstrom) it’s also pretty damn graphic. The body horror can only be described as Barker-esque.
“Coup de Grâce,” is not quite Danielewski meta, but does break the fourth wall. I’m not one for spoilers, all you need to know is that the final blow, the titular “Coup de Grâce,” is something the reader must deliver. Our choices carry weight, and can impact others, perhaps fatally. We’re forced to grapple with our own place in today’s capitalistic society. Are we, like Vicken muses, merely cogs, ground down by the very system we’re trapped within? Ajram doesn’t offer easy answers, but instead, holds up a mirror, reflecting our complicity in the structure that bind us.
As I’m sure many readers will have already figured, the brutalist architecture that Vicken finds himself unable to escape from is but a metaphor- the mind after all can be both a sanctuary and a prison. A train station is simply a mid-point between two destinations, it is the most liminal of liminal spaces, a place where you don’t quite exist as much as you drink shitty coffee and wait impatiently, the hours seeming to stretch and contract. It can be pretty mind-numbing anyway, but here, time loses all meaning, and both Vicken and the reader are left to grapple with their darkest fears. This is arguably the true horror of Ajram’s creation: not the physical dangers that lurk in the labyrinth, but the psychological terror of being trapped in a place where every path leads back to the same, unrelenting despair.The soul-crushing sameness, the bitter disappointment lurking around each corner, whilst this particular landscape may be alien, it’s still achingly familiar. The repetitive, featureless maze he encounters reflects the monotony of his life, every day bleeding into the next with no promise of escape. Rather cruelly, it is both a place of movement and stasis, a space where Vicken is constantly in motion, yet never truly gets anywhere. It is the ultimate expression of futility, a reflection of the ways in which mental illness can make even the smallest tasks feel insurmountable. Vicken’s struggles with suicide are depicted with a rawness that’s rarely seen in fiction, a reminder that sometimes the scariest monsters don’t manifest physically.
Yes we live in a world with metros, we share a planet with Florida, and often find ourselves stuck in a mind-bendingly mundane routine- but “Coup de Grâce,” is not a novel about hopelessness. It is a story that acknowledges the bleakness of life, but it also captures those fleeting moments that remind us why we keep moving forward. We flirt with strangers on trains, even in dark times we meet good people, and we live in a world rich with art and literature. Yes, in fact, at times, the novella is rather hopeful, but even in moments of light, it refuses to let you look away from the darkness, Ajram balances hope and despair, never diminishing either, ultimately demonstrating that the two co-exist.
A tour de force, a triumph, a coup de maître if you will, that defies the confines of its novella format, this is a book that will haunt you, challenge you, perhaps even change you. Sofia Ajram is a rising star in horror, that the genre is far, far better for.
Leave a Reply