The first thing you notice about this novel, after you have gotten beyond the design of the cover and the hype on its back, is that the words in it jump and flame and spark into the darkness and into the light without care or want for where they land, and, land they do. I found myself, time and again, stopping to re-read a sentence, or a phrase, trying to see how it was just so crafted and flashing to the author's photo looking for the courage and the nerve that risked the effort.
The set up is so common, so ordinary. A troubled couple from Brooklyn move upstate to sort out their troubles. The house they buy is haunted. I live in upstate New York. It is my sad duty to report that troubled couples in Brooklyn are bringing their troubles to upstate on a regular and unfortunate basis, but, mostly the houses up here are not haunted until they arrive in them.
The novel initially arrests with its alternating narrators and its short punchy chapters. James and Julie each have something to say and they say it well. What is not clear from the beginning is if they brought their haunting to the house or the house has provided a haunting for them.
One night Julie lies awake and marinades their marriage in its disappointing mystery and the tensions that she believes the house has brought to it. She thinks of that night and the nights to come without end: "The nights like this start to line up like match sticks, close together, hard to count." I wondered if the author had thought to end that sentence with "and easy to ignite" and had decided not to state the obvious. That is how good Ms. Jemc is as a writer.
What she is not good at is telling a story which is not always a fault in a novel, but, is a particularly egregious fault when you are telling a ghost story. If James and Julie are the ghosts of their past and present, and if that was the story she wanted to tell, then she should have left out the haunted house. It only distracts from the personal horror. If she wanted to tell a story about a haunted house, she should have told that story and remembered any one reading wants to know about the ghost.
My sense is that the novel tries to have it both ways although I cannot say that was the intent of the author and that, in itself, is the problem with this book. In the end, it doesn't end. You don't put it down with any resolution. There is no ending. There is only James and Julie wandering back to Brooklyn for further navel gazing while they pawn the house off on a new and unsuspecting family. Oh, how progressive.
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Creepfest
I’m not going to sugar coat things. This book was work and it was not a quick read. Not by a long shot. The chapters were super short so you would think the pages would fly, right? No. They absolutely do not fly. The writing style was literary, I knew that going in, and the language was lovely and often gutting in its honesty but what I didn’t anticipate were the alternating POV’s of the married couple who are haunted by their new house (or were they?). Every single time a new chapter began with the other’s POV it would throw me out of the groove of the story and take me several moments to get back into it. And since many of the chapters were only 2 – 3 pages long there was a lot of mental jostling going on here. Perhaps you won’t have this issue and this much of a struggle but I’d be lying if I didn’t cop to it.With that said, the book was a treasure trove of eerie atmosphere and emotional turmoil. The writing was truly striking and the crushing and stifling dread closing in on the couple? Phew, I’m still feeling the remnants of those claustrophobic, paranoid feelings days later. Their struggle, their worry, and their confusion? That stuff was so amazingly well done. I LOVE that sort of writing thus I was determined to see this book through to the very end. Were they going mad together? Was the house haunted? Or was it something more sinister and grounded in the real world? And what was up with the weirdo neighbor? I’m not telling you any of these things because I am not 100% sure of the answers even after finishing it. I had to get this book back to the library so I’ll have to do a reread on audio someday to see if I can find all of my answers to all of my pesky questions.So, do I think you should read it? Perhaps and perhaps not. What I do recommend is maybe grabbing yourself a sample and reading the first 50 -75 pages and see how it works for you personally. The Grip of It isn’t a book that will appeal to everyone but, damn, that writing was lush and I am sucker for lush writing especially when it’s creepy! I have zero regrets.
Top reviews from other countries
Dan Luck
Not As Clever As It Thinks It Is
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 27, 2020