The Grip of It

Starred review from June 5, 2017
The latest from Jemc (A Different Bed Every Time) is a haunted house tale that toys with the hallmarks of ghost stories—a young city couple moving to a small town, a curmudgeonly neighbor, a spooky legend—to create an exhilarating and unsettling literary page-turner. After settling into their new home, James and Julie discover it is riddled with secret rooms and passageways. Soon thereafter, drawings appear on a bedroom wall, noises keep them up at night, and bruises appear on Julie’s body. Despite their efforts, they can’t get in touch with their realtor, who has vanished from existence, and the woods that line their backyard—full of children playing in the treetops—appear closer to their house each day. A local bartender tells James about the troubled family who previously owned the house, and while snooping around the neighboring home of a secretive old man, the couple discovers a life filled with tragedy and premature death. From here, Jemc settles comfortably into the couple’s increasingly paranoid and disturbed thoughts. Short chapters bounce between James’s and Julie’s perspectives, and as the author ratchets up the tension, the reader eagerly follows. The conclusion is the perfect cap to a story full of genuine frights.

July 1, 2017

As reward for our labors, we expect home to provide sanctuary, comfort, and familiarity. Despite ambiguous town chatter regarding the strange, apparently tragic history of their new home, James and Julie settle in, concerned only by elderly neighbor Rolf's voyeurism. Day by day, though, the house consumes their attention and nerves: odd-sized "secret spaces"--as difficult to enter as exit--are discovered. Molds and stains appear at once patterned and discontinuous. A sporadic humming tone, not always heard by both, is unfindable. Are the woods growing closer or receding? Is someone getting into the house and moving things around? Even the clock can't be trusted, with bizarre dilations and compressions of time. The marriage, previously troubled by James's gambling, suffers, but the couple vow solidarity. The second-person point of view charges the narrative with jagged energy, and in the end, we learn that people are more haunted than any house. Jemc (My Only Wife; A Different Bed Every Time) reconfigures the haunted-house story to reflect current anxieties and their violation of formerly intimate spaces and relationships. VERDICT For connoisseurs of the "new weird" and literary/psychological horror a la Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and Marisha Pessl's Night Film. [See Prepub Alert, 2/20/17.]--William Grabowski, McMechen, WV

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