Book Review : Sofia Ajram - Coup de Grâce (2024)

Nov 15

Nov 15 Book Review : Sofia Ajram - Coup de Grâce (2024)

The Montreal subway is not like the subway in most cities. Every station (or almost) is its own brutalist art installation where the most unnecessary and anachronistic design and concrete clumsily coexist. It’s a trip and it's one of the many reasons why I like my city more than most places in the world. Depending on your state of mind, it can be a different experience each time. Montreal-based author Sofia Ajram explored this colorful idiosyncrasy (and much more) in her debut novella Coup de Grâce.

Coup de Grâce tells the story of Vicken, a suicidal person planning to throw herself in the St. Lawrence river to end her life. In order to get there, Vicken needs to take the subway and he gets lost. That’s right, Vicken cannot find the exit anymore and the further he ventures into the system, the more he discovers places that don’t actually exist and that, in all honestly, shouldn’t. He even meets a brokenhearted woman named Pashmina who seems on the same path of self-destruction he is on.

The Agony and the Ecstacy of Liminal Horror

Not gonna lie: Coup de Grâce has one of the most efficient and arresting opening chapter I’ve read in a while. I’ve been volunteering at a suicide prevention hotline for two years and Vicken's plight is harrowing and realistic. After that chapter, Coup de Grâce becomes… something entirely different. The best way I could describe it is Alejandro Jodorowsky’s Holy Mountain meets David Cronenberg’s Videodrome. Vicken falls into a netherworld he’ll need to show some fight to get out of.

So what is liminal horror exactly? In Coup de Grâce, it’s the Montreal subway twisting and turning and transforming into a sentient hellscape for wandering souls (which it may or may not already be). It feeds on the disorganization and the brooding heartbreak of its prisoners in order to perpetuate itself. In these circumstances, Vicken, Pashmina and everyone wandering between life and death are fed back to this primordial, uncaring superstructure that brought them there in the first place.

Now, there’s a catch when you’re writing a book where a character falls into a universe where there’s seemingly no rules and nothing makes sense. If there are no stakes, readers will eventually stop caring about your character and discount your whole setting as some kind of purgatory the character is caught in. Sofia Ajram brilliantly circumvents this problem by offering an ending that’s not only open, but that the character can choose like in a "chose your aventure" kind of book.

Some thing don’t belong to you

I loved that ending because it responsibilizes the reader in regards to the amount of comfort he chooses leave with. Vicken is not in a comfortable place in his life. He's heading into a place of misery and nothingness and his suffering is not an object of entertainment. By choosing to ending Coup de Grâce the way she did, Sofia Ajram left the door a little ajar so that you can understand what’s going on, but you’ll also have to use your imagination in order to pull Vicken from the nightmare of the self.

It’s too often left unsaid, but written fiction is an act of co-creation between a writer and a reader and Sofia Ajram used it to its full extent in Coup de Grâce. I liked how you don’t have to choose for Vicken. You can, but you can also decide to live all the realities through which his fate is different. The only thing you need to remember that’s important is that he was suffering and the fabric of the universe itself turned against him. It’s a powerful allegory for how people with suicidal ideas feel.

I really liked Coup de Grâce. Not all the scenes had the necessary symbolic power to carry themselves, but it’ showcases a new way of writing and thinking about literature. It eschews some bricks-and-mortar rules of storytelling, but it’s at the benefit of better and bolder ideas. Coup de Grâce is most certainly a literary UFO, but it’s worth stopping by to appreciate. If you’re struggling with suicidal ideas yourself, dial call 988 for help. Whether you agree or not right now, this world is a better place with you in it.