Coup de Grâce

Taking the form of a disturbing, high-stakes choose-your-own-adventure novel, Arjam’s captivating debut explores loneliness and desolation. Vicken intends to ride the Montreal subway to the end of the line, where, at the Saint Lawrence River, he plans to die by drowning. When he arrives at his stop, however, he finds himself unable to exit: the station has turned into an enormous, incomprehensible, unmappable maze of hallways and caverns. Reminiscent of Susanna Clark’s Piranesi, and with nods to Borges’s “Library of Babel,” it’s a surreal setting rendered all the more horrifying by the mysteries lurking beneath the empty halls. Readers ostensibly control Vicken’s choices as he navigates this harrowing labyrinth, flipping to different pages depending on what action they want him to take, but as the novel unfolds, one is left with the feeling that free will is an illusion. Equally haunting and heartbreaking, this complex meditation on belonging announces an exciting new voice in experimental horror. (Oct.)