Come Closer by Sara Gran


Come Closer by Sara Gran, first published 2003 in the USA by Soho Press, Inc. First published 2005 in the UK by Atlantic Books.

This is not your traditional Gothic novel, however it includes several Gothic tropes and is akin to Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (1892).

Amanda is a thirty-four year old architect, seemingly happy with her career, her home and her husband, Ed. But is she? 

The story begins with a report Amanda has submitted at work being mysteriously substituted for vicious insults about her boss. She begins to hear strange tap-taps in her home, a loft apartment a little out of the main part of the city. She bickers with her husband when he returns home late. She also has strange dreams about a beautiful woman with tangled hair and pointy teeth.

As Amanda's behaviour deteriorates - renewing a smoking habit, shop-lifting and burning her husband with a cigarette - she begins to think she is being possessed by a Biblical demon, but that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? She reads books, consults a medium, and a spiritual church, but perhaps her behaviour is purely due to stress? Her husband advises her to see a psychiatrist, which she does, but nothing helps.  Eventually Amanda spirals into the inevitable conclusion of the book.

As well as being about mental illness and demonic possession, the book reflects on marital relationships and upsetting the norm. Amanda's changes could be seen as a freedom from the constraints of society.  Her husband likes her to be neat, so she isn't. She chats up strange men in bars,with no concern for how Ed feels. Although taken to extremes, her actions are an outward demonstration of what she is thinking. For example, at one point she takes a nasty revenge on a woman who bumped into her in the street and didn't properly apologise.

This is a short novel, with unsettling themes. It has violence and gore, mental health issues and supernatural phenomenon, a doomed marriage and murder, setting it nicely into a Gothic category.


Gothic rating:

Isolated setting:                            ðŸ•±

Brooding atmosphere:                 ðŸ•±

Mental illness:                             ðŸ•±

Religious reference:                    🕱

Supernatural elements:                🕱

Murder:                                       🕱

Family secret:                           

Genius/madness:

Doomed love:                              🕱


Come Closer has a Gothic rating of  🕱🕱🕱🕱🕱🕱🕱
 

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