Demonic Impulse Shopping in Sara Gran's Come Closer

It starts with a tapping. Tap tap tap. The pitter patter of claws on a wood floor. Tap tap. Always in a room other than the one you’re investigating. Tap tap. It’s louder when your husband isn’t home and isn’t answering your calls. Something that seems to be happening more often lately, by the way. That’s probably unrelated, though.

The tapping is odd, but what’s stranger is your own behavior. How did an un-paid-for lipstick drop into your purse at the drugstore? How did your work proposal become filled with insults and obscenities directed at your boss? And why the actual fuck did you burn your husband’s leg with a cigarette?!

These are the experiences that plague Amanda, an architect in an unnamed city, in Come Closer, Sara Gran’s 2003 possession horror. Amanda’s unraveling escalates smoothly, unstoppably, across the slim novel’s 150-ish pages, the odd events steadily piling up with deadly consequences

And with Amanda—within Amanda—there is Naamah. A grin revealing pointed teeth, a tangle of matted black hair, a tongue that drags up the bridge of Amanda’s nose. “I love you, Amanda,” Naamah repeats firmly throughout their meetings. “I need you. I will never leave you.”

Naamah is a biblical demon. She exists outside Gran’s imagination; her story has been a subject of centuries of debate among religious scholars. Some trace Naamah’s origins to the dynasty of Cain and Abel. Others place her several generations later, as the wife or daughter-in-law of Noah. But the tale I find most intriguing, and the one Gran reimagines, names Naamah as the mother of demons. This Naamah visits humans in their dreams, seducing and corrupting them. She uses music—a rhythmic drumbeat—to foster idol worship, toys with men and strangles babies. Obviously, she’s incredibly evil.

But Naamah loves a bright red lip, a leather jacket. She loves tequila in the middle of the afternoon. She wants a cigarette in her hand, a wallet full of maxed out credit cards. Gran manages to stroll along this line between genuinely disturbing incidents and a sexy, uninhibited dark humor. Naamah is like a witty, lovable Rachel Harrison character strolled into one of Ira Levin’s menacing Satanic covens. She’s an ancient evil—but unleashing Amanda’s most intrusive, unwelcome desires is simply her version of fun. There’s something of the Cenobites in her; she exists by her own code of conduct and morality.

The novel’s brevity works because Gran manages to weave just the right amount of subtext in and around the go-go-go plot. While Amanda is preoccupied with her rapidly escalating possession, the reader is able to see what she cannot. We can see her husband’s growing absences as evidence of infidelity long before the thought occurs to her. We can see her loneliness, her disconnection from her surroundings.

Although Amanda is an architect who proudly designed the couple’s loft, we learn very little about its furnishings until a small detail—a black and white quilt—is mentioned in the final pages. We never learn the color of the sofa, whether the big windows have curtains, whether there are rugs on the floor, if the bathroom has drywall or tile. These signs of sadness and isolation complicate Amanda’s seemingly happy marriage and successful career.

In the end, what did Naamah really force her to give up?

Read It If You Like: Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and (obviously) Possession.

Clockwise from top left: Matin Table Lamp, Spy sunglasses by Anne et Valentin, Cup of Stars necklace by Sofia Zakia, Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman, Fantôme de Maules perfume by Stora Skuggan, Marukyu Koyamaen matcha, 3CE Blur Water Tint

Scare Me! graphics by Sam Pugh | Collage by me!