‘Come Closer’ – Sara Gran (Faber & Faber)

 


Page Count: 165 Pages

Well, that’s another Bank Holiday Weekend over and it will surprise absolutely no-one here when I tell you that the TBR pile, I made the other day, looks pretty much the same as it did. I had all the best intentions but as great as the weekend was, and it was, it didn’t leave me with much time for reading. Oh well, hopefully the rest of the week will be different. We’ll see…

I did get a little bit of reading done though, all 165 pages of ‘Come Closer’; a book that I came across on Amazon, a few weeks ago, and eventually picked up for precisely nothing in the Greenwich Waterstones (thanks, ‘Waterstones Loyalty Card’!) Yesterday was very much a day for a ‘short read’ and while that normally means an old ‘Doctor Who’ book, this time round I fancied a little horror. And that’s where ‘Come Closer’ came in…

There was no reason to assume anything out of the ordinary was going on.

Strange noises in the apartment.
Impulsive behaviour.
Intense dreams.

It wasn't like everything went wrong all at once.

Shoplifting.
Fighting.
Blackouts.

There must be a reasonable explanation for all this.

I had a few things to get done yesterday and I made sure that they got done, just so I could get back to ‘Come Closer’ and get a few more pages under my belt. And when everything else was done, I came straight back home and polished off the rest of the book. I didn’t really have any choice in the matter; there may not be any real surprises here but ‘Come Closer’ is possibly the most ‘compulsive read’ that I’ve read this year.

I wondered if Gran gave the game away a little too early in the proceedings… I don’t want to spoil it for anyone (just in case you haven’t picked this book up yet) but it is pretty clear, very early on, what is happening to Amanda (especially as Amanda is narrating after events have played out). And then I realised, that’s the whole point. Amanda doesn’t know what’s happening but we do and that creates a real conflict between the inevitability of Amanda’s situation and the hope she has that things will somehow work out. You know what’s coming but there is just enough uncertainty that I couldn’t help but keep reading. Add some events that seem innocuous (but are exactly the opposite) along with events that come out of nowhere, and absolutely shock, and you get a story that demands to be read. And the payoff is definitely worth sticking around for. What happens to Amanda is insidious and directed by an evil that has done this many times before. And we all know what that means… Yep, a finale that in the best traditions of horror movies (again, trying not to give too much away) turns Amanda’s world upside down at exactly the right time. It blew my mind as well.

There were a couple of bits that I felt could have been expanded on but only to confirm my suspicions of a wider conspiracy; the plot doesn’t suffer for these moments not being explained. ‘Come Closer’ is a quietly terrifying read that played merry hell with my nerves and, I suspect, will continue to do so for the next few days.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'Conan the Barbarian: Battle of the Black Stone’ – Zub, Scharf, Canola (Titan Comics, Heroic Signatures)

Image
It’s starting to look like this could be the week where I make a half decent dent in my ‘Comics TBR Pile’, lets see how we do... I’ve really been struggling with the ‘Savage Sword of Conan’ collection just recently (more than one reason but I want to finish the collection first before I talk about it) and I thought that I’d have to take a little step back from ‘Conan’ comics and come back when I was in a better mood for it. Until I realized that there was another ‘Conan’ comic lurking in the TBR pile and maybe I could give that a go instead. So that’s what I did. I’ve caught little glimpses of the ‘Black Stone’ storyline, in other ‘Conan’ comics, but I can’t help but feel that the event has kind of passed me by a little. That’s on me though to be fair, I’ve got the attention span of a goldfish right now and there are so many books that I just haven’t been able to focus on; I suspect a couple of them talk about a Black Stone… Oh well, I’m here now. Where better a place to catch up on ‘B...
Read more

‘Hellraiser 3: Hell on Earth’ (1992)

Image
Every time Halloween comes round, I promise myself that I’ll watch more horror films and read more horror fiction; we’re halfway through the month and you can see how that’s going so far… There’s still plenty of October left though so lets see how I do from now until the end of the month ;o) First up is ‘Hellraiser 3’ which I watched last night, mostly because I love it (you can tell how this post is going to go, sorry…) but also because it was cheap on Prime and I’m still just on the wrong side of payday. Here goes… TV reporter Joey Summerskill’s life is changed forever when she witnesses the horrific death of a teenager, torn apart by bloody chains. Joey’s search for a story leads her to the Lament Configuration Box but it has already been opened, waking an old evil from its slumber… Now Pinhead walks the earth once more, creating a new army of Cenobites from the transmuted flesh of his victims; his one desire to reclaim the Box. Even with help from an unexpected source, Joey Summers...
Read more

‘Dig Me No Grave’ – Robert E. Howard

Image
  Page Count: Fourteen Pages, eight lines and two words (sorry, it has been one of those weeks) I was looking for something short and sweet, to end the week on, and came across ‘Dig Me No Grave’ courtesy of Paperback Warrior’s write-up . Having read it, I can attest to it being short (all of fourteen and a bit pages in ‘The Dead Remember’ collection) but sweet? Not at all and that is meant in the best possible way :o) ‘Dig Me No Grave’ was originally published in the February 1937 of ‘Weird Tales’ and while it has appeared in other collections since then, I read it in ‘The Dead Remember (The Dark Man Omnibus: Volume 2) and also found it in my copy of ‘The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. If you’re an e-reading type, you can grab yourself ‘Dig Me No Grave’ over at Project Gutenberg. John Kirowan is woken, in the middle of the night, by his friend John Conrad, bearer of bad news and come to beg a favour. The occultist John Grimlan has just died and Conrad asks that Kirowan att...
Read more