8. Come Closer

By Sara Gran

This novella came highly recommended by Paul Tremblay,

Come Closer had everything I wanted in a horror tale and was the perfect antidote to the terrible My Heart Is a Chainsaw.  Gran's writing flowed in a way that instantly sutured me into the narrative, and I never felt a need to pause and question the way it was written.  It only took me two days to read it.  Imagine how much more effective and memorable so many unnecessarily long novels would be with economical writing and merciless editing!  

The premise was simple, yet effectively done.  It’s a first-person account of what it’s like to lose control of your mind and body over time.  A woman is in the early stages of demonic possession and all this is played out inside Amanda’s interior world.  From the outside, it looks like Amanda is slowly losing her grip on sanity and that she’s struggling with her marriage.  There are also signs that her husband is having an affair with his constant absences due to late nights with his “work”.

One thing which bothered me was how the book mentioned early on that one sign of early demonic possession was the demonstration of some psychic ability.  If Amanda touched someone, or an object that belonged to a previous owner, she would have a brief window into a defining moment in their lives.  But the book never brought up whether Amanda had this kind of insight with her husband. Despite their emotional distance, she would’ve had all kinds of opportunities to touch Ed, or when she saw her doctor, who was possibly the one Ed whom was cheating with. The novel dropped big hints that Ed was having an affair but it was never clear whether Amanda knew, either by normal or psychic means.  The writing had that elusive quality of an unreliable narrator with a tenuous grasp on reality, which can be frustrating, as the real purpose was to keep the reader in the dark and/or manipulate their perceptions.

And of course, I envisioned the demon Naamah as Beatrice Dalle, à la L’Interieur, with her big teeth and dark, menacing charisma.

Side note:  I have previously read a very different book by Sara Gran, the first of a series of detective books featuring Claire DeWitt.