A Review of Coup de Grace by Sofia Ajram

*SPOILER ALERT* This review contains plot details of Coup de Grace.

Published on October 1, 2024 by Titan Books.

Have you ever drawn your skin across the edge of something sharp, felt the sting of flesh splitting, the gentle tug as a thousand epithelial cells part? It doesn’t quite hurt, it feels nearly inconsequential—but then the blood comes, heady and fast, the shock of so much red from such a tiny cut. This is how it feels to read Sofia Ajram’s Coup de Grace, this is how it flays you open—with a whisper of silver, and a flood of vulnerability.

Vicken, a soul-tired EMT and our main protagonist, is prepared to escape this dismal existence. Undeterred by his love for the softest parts of life, he plans to fling himself into the Saint Lawrence River and sink into blissful oblivion. But this is not to be. Disembarking from the subway and onto the platform of his last stop, Vicken instead finds an endlessly winding maze, determined to keep him trapped within. Wander as he may, there is no end to these gray-washed walls and buzzing fluorescents, to the towering cathedrals and corridors built as monuments to commercialism and obsolescence. He begins to suspect his summoning to this place was no accident, that something terrifying within the labyrinth is toying with him.

Coup de Grace does not shy from centering itself around horror and the despair of suicidality. From the book’s summary, you’re prepared to read about the labyrinthine, brutalist nightmare of the maze Vicken is trapped in. You are prepared to understand it as a supernatural metaphor for depression and anxiety. What blindsides you is the excruciating intimacy of the narrative, and the way it lovingly peels away your defenses and makes you greet the darkest version of yourself. The way it requires an act of condemnation or salvation from its reader at its close—towards Vicken, and, consequently, towards the self.

The first way in which Ajram wields this narrative to pry you open is through language. He has a magnificent mastery of words, and every one of them is chosen with a precision that never fails to pierce your carefully constructed defenses. This is not a book you can engage with passively, it requires your attention, your imagination, your intelligence, your honesty. You must masticate the message and the words used to tell it. Have your dictionary open—anatomy, medicine, architecture, mythology—there is meaning in every reference and metaphor. The prose is its own entity, hypnotizing and soothing like a drugged haze, an ill-advised lust, the voice of a seductive, intrusive idea. Dive into the river. Take the pills. Just give in. 

This mastery of language also enhances the horror. Sensorimotor OCD is a condition that makes you hyperaware of your body: the heartbeat in your ears, the floaters in your eyes, the spit in your mouth. Just so, Ajram does not let you or Vicken forget the burden of existing in a cage of flesh. The descriptions of his suffering are disturbing and deviant, calling forth disgust and terror as the physical form ages, breaks down, betrays. Vicken’s mind cannibalizes itself, ruminating endlessly on his slow destruction. The deepest moments of terror are not the nightmares lurking in the endless gray corridors, but what the protagonist carries within. The twisting tunnels of this labyrinth are in his body; the labyrinth is in his mind.

Here, Ajram cuts into you again, with the pain of recognition, with their ability to convey visceral human emotion. This internal labyrinth is that carousel of rage, apathy, overwhelm you have spun on since you could comprehend injustice. It is the black humor of despair and exhaustion, the kind you can only understand after you’ve come to the edge and nearly fallen from its precipice. Vicken’s mind/body screams: THIS IS YOUR BEING ON LATE-STAGE CAPITALISM, and we understand, because we are living the same nightmare. He bleeds concrete and silt because homogeneity and hopelessness have seeped into him. He wanders the nightmare of replicated, repeated, subway corridors, featureless and unremarkable, and is ground down by the curated nothingness of our ersatz society. In desperation, Vicken debates himself on philosophical bullshit that has haunted humanity since its inception: purpose, love, peace, the point of living, whether hope is hopeful, or simply another noose to hang yourself with—and finds no solutions. There is a comfort in his despair, in tasting this flavor of self-destructive longing. A familiarity that threatens to return you to the bad days.

But Ajram has a final knife to throw, trembling and deadly, towards their soft, pulpy target. When Vicken first speaks to us, it is a poignantly jarring moment. You’ve become so accustomed to the misery of his thoughts, the shambling, dragging weight of his body, that it is startling to realize you and he are not one in the same. You are a witness, the book seems to say, you are all he has. And there’s comfort in that, too. The company you provide him, the kind you wished for in your own labyrinth. Until Ajram rips that comfort away and puts Vicken’s fate in your hands.

The final stretch of Coup de Grace allows you to choose Vicken’s ending—and shouldn’t you have expected that? It’s in the name. Coup de grâce: death blow, finishing shot, mercy killing of animal that lays bleeding. And so, you are no longer a witness. You are complicit. You look at this animal lying bleeding and you are forced to consider: what would I want someone to decide for me? It’s not so easy as putting the dog to sleep: You have a nearly unbearable sympathy for this man. You know Vicken, you have grieved with him, you have experienced his fears and his longings and his impossible hope. You were him, once. Perhaps you are him now.

I won’t tell you what I chose for Vicken, or what, by extension, I chose for myself. But I hope the ending I gave us shows I understood the message implicit in Ajram’s masterful words. There is horror in life, yes. There is misery, always. But there is also art. Deification of the ugliest of commercialism, elevation of the human condition, romanticization of the simplest pleasures. And that is enough to live for, on the days you are lost in the labyrinth. Ajram’s voice is so shameless, so vivacious, so unabashedly clairvoyant, that these lessons never feel like a sermon, a minimization of the misery the book explores. You know Ajram has lain on the subway tracks, waded knee-deep in the river, stood on the precipice, right alongside you. So, even at its darkest, Coup de Grace is a paean to beauty that tempts you to live.