#BookReview ‘Coup De Grace’ by Sofia Ajram

About the book…

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.

‘Coup De Grace’ was published in hardcover and e-book formats by Titan books, in October 2024.

A confession-I haven’t read the referenced texts,  ‘House Of Leaves’, and it’s been a million years since reading any Susanna Clarke (soon to be rectified, I have a chunky doorstopper of ‘Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell’ to hopefully dive into this year.

I picked this book up on the synopsis alone, and was gifted a copy of this novella by the lovely folks at Titan, but all my opinions are my own.

This is a small book which contains multitudes, and it would be remiss of me to not guide any cautious reader to the content warnings at the start as this goes to some very dark places.

It took me months to read because, in all honestly, it strikes way too close to home for me to find it a comfortable read, but then, this is absolutely not supposed to be a comfortable ,easy read with a pat ending.

Without giving away anything that is not in the blurb, Vicken is a person on their way to the end of the line, literally, and metaphorically. After living with an unspecified amount of time within the confines of a , by its nature, traumatizing job as a paramedic, dealing with personal loss and seeing no way ahead, they have decided to catch the Metro to it’s final station and walk into the sea.

A literal weighing down with stones will cause what they believe to be a peaceful end after it becomes clear that several other methods they have tried have been unsuccessful . The sequelae to this is that Vicken becomes even more an inhabitant of this liminal space where people do not know how to engage with, and treat them.

By the way,I am using they/them as it was over half way through the novella that I saw Vicken use a ‘he’ pronoun, and did not want to assume that this not unintentional as this individual is both centered in their character, whilst also their gender identity is an important part of their disconnection to other people, due to generic systemic, and societal, misunderstanding and weaponising of gender. I hope that makes sense and does not cause offence.

Meeting a person named Felix on the Metro-again, not trying to ascribe meanings where maybe none exist, felix is Latin for happy, or lucky, which carries weight to what happens later in the novella-Vicken makes an unexpected connection that tethers them to the reality they then encounter.

As the only person left on the train, when they get off, the station which was expected is absolutely not what they find.

It is a nightmare of epic proportions which forces Vicken to dive deeply into how hard and how long they will fight for their right to do with their life, in a manner which befits them .

This space is both real and unreal, again creating this liminality of death, rebirth, and the space between those states, most firmly centered on how to subvert and overcome the challenges facing Vicken as they try to escape this hellscape of an underground station.

Liminal spaces are both implicit and explicitly revealed through Vicken’s journey and their first person narration is intense, so powerful, that it creates an ‘otherness’ beyond and rooted in Vicken’s needs which transcends where they tell you they are. This is because, for the first time, physical bodily functions and need to conform and behave are abandoned and Vicken can truly give themselves over to the where their mental state is.

Through contact with one other individual in one of the stations, and a scant back story as the whys this point has been reached,are not necessarily as important to understand, the reader just needs to know that Vicken is here, and now, ready to take control of the narrative.

It allows the reader to fill in the blanks as it were, and to fill that space themselves which is why, I think, so many reviews have had a visceral reaction to both the subject matter and the prose. The prose is verbose but does it really matter if you have to look up some words -I had to look up the title and there is no shame in that, and many other words, this isn’t , to make, a case of thesaurus waving, it speaks to the world building that Sofia is creating.

The vivid imagery is both grotesque and necessary, this is not a real life decision to die being stalled by being held in a space where Vicken has to prove they want to live in or order to complete their plans to die.

This is not going to be pretty, and the details are the things which floored me-hello sertraline sickness, and other people’s lack of comfort with you being able to talk about these things which lurk in the darkest parts of our recesses.

The ending is,in my humble opinion, perfect.

Life itself is a choose your own adventure, if you look at it that way, and that includes having control over your exit.

And as the title says, it is, a final act, a culmination of bad or poor decisions, some of which are taken out of your hands.

This is a bold and visionary novel which reminded me of early Clive Barker, fantastical and other worldly and I am so grateful to have taken breaks, thought long and hard, and then journeyed with Vicken to the end of their story.

About the author…

Sofia Ajram is a metalsmith, writer and editor who specializes in feverish stories of anomalous architecture and queer pining.

She is the designer of Sofia Zakia jewelry as well as the writer of the novella Coup de Grâce and the editor of

He has also given lectures on contemporary horror films at Monstrum Montreal and serves as a moderator of r/horror on Reddit. Sofia lives in Montreal with her cat Isa.

Links-https://www.sofiaajram.com/

‘Bury Your Gays: An Anthology Of Tragic Gay Horror’

Twitter @TitanBooks @sofiaajram