Run Like Hell
When the most positive thing to say about a novel is that it’s mercifully short there must be something going wrong somewhere. Admittedly Come Closer can hardly be accused of misrepresenting itself as anything other than pulpy trash but what marks this out as unusual is its unwavering mediocrity. The only thing that can redeem something like this is an all out plunge into comical awfulness, the ‘so bad it’s good’ principle.
Sadly Sara Gran seems to know what a well-written novel should be like without being able to deliver. The result is a novella which grinds painfully along for almost 170 pages before petering out, almost as if bored by its own existence. Come Closer is the story of Amanda, a woman possessed by the demon Naamah who was originally conjured (depending on which origin story the reader likes) for one of a variety of reasons, all of which essentially have their roots in male mistreatment of women.
The possession begins as a tapping in the apartment (of course), rapidly progressing to Amanda taking up smoking again, followed by increasingly erratic and unusual behaviour leading inexorably to arguments, violence and murder.
As if the formulaic nature of her plot was not obvious enough, Gran then proceeds to give a checklist of clichés in the form of a questionnaire entitled ‘Are you possessed?’ It is not immediately obvious whether this is an audacious move aimed at provoking the reader’s preconceptions of the genre or just a terrible mistake, Gran’s style soon clears things up however. By the end it is almost impossible to give her any credit at all as a writer.
Gran would clearly like to be known as an exciting feminist writer who pulls no punches, hence the use of Naamah, an archetypal spurned woman figure. Throughout Come Closer there is a strong aversion to the patriarchal systems which entomb both demon and woman. The main antagonists are uniformly men, particularly Amanda’s husband Ed, and at every turn in plot the union of Amanda and Naamah is enough to unsettle and defeat complacent manhood.
Ed attempts to reason with his wife, then to argue and eventually decides to leave her (a course of action which goes wrong in the most predictable way possible). Elsewhere it is a male therapist who tries and fails to exorcise the demon and various incidental encounters with men make it clear that they are little more than slavering, sex-obsessed animals easily cowed and intimidated by the strength of Naamah/Amanda.
There is a cautionary message about the dangers of too much personal empowerment which comes into play about halfway through the novella as Amanda becomes increasingly appalled and terrified by Naamah's behaviour but any interest the reader might have had will have dissipated by this point.
Ironically (and unfortunately) this novel, which clearly intended to further advance the feminist cause, is so poorly executed that it makes a striking argument for never letting this particular woman near a pen again. What makes Come Closer infuriating is the fact that, despite its woefully thin non-plot and crabbed, mundane writing style, it is impossible to put down. The novella’s single unqualified success is in the way that it is set out on the page.
The author breaks the narrative into chunks of a couple of paragraphs each with the result that there is no convenient place to break off and abandon the whole sorry business. What happens is that the unsuspecting reader picks up the book and reads solidly for two hours, not because of a desire to know what happens next, that's obvious to the point of painful, but out of desperate desire to finish. Never has a book been so utterly unenjoyable and yet so compelling.
Come Closer is one of those books from which no good can come, only dissatisfaction and a loss of precious time. Avoid like rabid monkeys.
21st Apr 2005