Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram – Book Review

Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram, A Horror Book Review by Natalie Wall

They are things too strange, too big, too impossible to understand, and so the protagonist doesn’t understand it and often doesn’t try. It feels like an apt genre to call on to explore mental illness in this way.

Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram, A Horror Book Review by Natalie Wall

Sofia Ajram’s Coup de Grâce is a short novella which follows the character of Vicken who boards a subway train, determined to take his own life once he reaches his destination. After what he thinks will be his last moment of human connection, having a sex with another passenger, Vicken arrives at the end of the subway line. But, after disembarking the train he cannot find a way off the platform, apparently stuck in an endless maze of stairs, damp concrete corridors, and convenience stores. 

The phrase in the title ‘Coup de Grâce’ means a merciful or decisive blow that ends suffering or resistance, a clear reference to what Vicken perceives his suicide will be. But the endless maze of the subway station means this end of continually deferred. The novella is experimental, becoming more so as it continues towards its end, and even seems to engage with the absurd as Vicken’s attempts to find an escape appear like a complete folly.

There is no apparent way out of the endless concrete maze, but also why does he keep looking if his desire was to end his life anyway? 

The story starts off subtle, with the horror building steadily through a sense of acute dread and claustrophobia as Vicken traverses the endless corridors. As a reader it feels like we are following him deeper into his depression as he goes deeper into the subway – it becomes more and more damp and eventually horrific, the heights of the visceral horror being a VanderMeer-esque moment of large-scale body horror of such striking proportions that the rest of the novella will feel like a come-down.

Towards the end there is an intriguing formal twist which borrows from the choose-your-own-adventure style. You can choose to follow this structure or read this section straight through. The latter option lends a more existential and even more dreamlike sense to the novel as you witness all the potential outcomes of Vicken’s choices and how this relates to the struggle to continue and make decisions when faced with profound depression. 

It’s inevitable that Ajram’s novella will garner comparisons to Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves or Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi, but Coup de Grâce is definitely unique in the way it uses conventions of the ‘cosmic horror’ genre to explore the central theme of mental illness and suicidal ideation. In keeping with the conventions of cosmic horror we don’t learn anything about the origins of the endless tunnels, the beings that live there, or what happens to others trapped like Vicken. But these questions are not really the point, although this will frustrate many readers I’m sure. They are things too strange, too big, too impossible to understand, and so the protagonist doesn’t understand it and often doesn’t try. It feels like an apt genre to call on to explore mental illness in this way.

An intriguing little read for the weird horror lovers.

Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram

“A harrowing exploration of the expanding labyrinth of despair and the self.” Paul Tremblay.

A mindbending and visceral experimental horror about a young man trapped in an infinite Montreal subway station, perfect for readers of Mark Z. Danielewski and Susanna Clarke.

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.

A terrifying psychological nightmare from a powerful new voice in horror.