Book Title:
Come Closer
Book Author:
Sara Gran
Page Count:
196
Publishing Date:
July 1st, 2003
Publisher:
Soho Press
Date Read:
March 1st, 2022
Format:
Kindle Edition
Source:
Purchased

Synopsis

A recurrent, unidentifiable noise in her apartment. A memo to her boss that's replaced by obscene insults. Amanda—a successful architect in a happy marriage—finds her life going off kilter by degrees. She starts smoking again, and one night for no reason, without even the knowledge that she's doing it, she burns her husband with a cigarette. At night she dreams of a beautiful woman with pointed teeth on the shore of a blood-red sea.

The new voice in Amanda's head, the one that tells her to steal things and talk to strange men in bars, is strange and frightening, and Amanda struggles to wrest back control of her life. Is she possessed by a demon, or is she simply insane?

My Review

“What we think is impossible happens all the time.”

Come Closer by Sara Gran is one of those books that I took a chance on – it sounded interesting and it was available to read for free on Prime Reading, so I gave it a go. I was kind of skeptical because of how short it was, not sure that there would be enough time for any real character development, but I was so surprised when I read it for the first time.

Yes, the first time.

I have read this book easily over ten times now. It’s one of my all-time favorite books. And since it is so short, it makes it easy to return to it time and time again.

Come Closer is kind of like an old friend. Not the kind of “old friend” that the main character, Amanda, encounters in this book (thankfully!), but an old friend that can comfort me even when I’m having a really bad day (not as bad as Amanda’s days, but hey).

“We could devote our lives to making sense of the odd, the inexplicable, the coincidental, but most of us don’t. And neither did I.”

Amanda is your average thirty-four year old, who also happens to live in her dream apartment, have a job she loves the salary of (she’s an architect), and is married to the love of her life. Her life is a good one, and she is happy with it.

And then the tapping started.

She heard it in her apartment, and so did her husband – but they both just assumed it was a mouse, or the old building they lived in. With increasing intensity each night, it was slowly starting to drive the couple kind of crazy.

But it was nothing compared to what came next.

Amanda starts noticing changes in herself – she starts smoking again, getting in fights with her husband, and even shoplifting – and she is losing chunks of time and not remembering what happens during them.

And things only get worse from there.

Finally, Amanda comes face-to-face with a horrifying truth. It’s a truth she can’t do anything about, a truth she can’t even tell her husband, with whom her relationship has turned quite chilly.

Amanda is possessed by a demon.

And the demon has no intention of leaving her.

Ever.

“By now the most shocking truth wasn’t that there were more like her and me, or that her ability to manipulate me was growing so rapidly – it was that, previously, I had been so stupid as to think I had any understanding of the universe at all.”

I just love this book.

I love how it was written.

I love the plot, I love the characters, I love the dreams in some of the chapters. Every single time I read this book, I am taken from my life into Amanda’s immediately. Sara Gran has such a wonderful way with words that she can not only paint the perfect picturesque setting in the book, but she can also create vivid, realistic characters that will grab onto you and not let you go, even after you’ve finished the book.

The character development in this book – or, I guess, recession in this case – is some of the best I’ve ever read. I have no idea how the author wrote Amanda’s character so well, but she is probably one of my favorite literary characters ever. She went backwards – from having it all to having her entire identity stripped away from her because of the possession she deals with.

I absolutely love horror novels, but I don’t really ever find myself reading books dealing with demons or possessions (I don’t know why, that whole subject just freaks me out – books and movies included). I’m not exactly religious or anything, it’s just downright freaky.

However, if you don’t mind that subject, then this is a book you will really enjoy.

Also, even if you do mind the subject and, like me, tend to stray away from it, give this one a read anyway.

You’ll never know how much you’ll like it.

5 stars
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