...a cerebral haunting in book form, a page-turning, suspenseful read that will stay with you long after you’ve finished it ... Like the work of Leonora Carrington, the effective terror of The Grip of It comes with sudden juxtaposition of the surreal, both in the subject’s environment and within the subject’s persona ... The Grip of It stalks the reader through its pages with a silent, grayscale terror, like the brush of a web against your cheek in the dark ... Jemc is telling us the story of the putrefaction of a relationship. This relationship is not clean-cut and bookended by dramatic flares?—?it festers, untended, a thriving hotbed for the things that break us down, cell by cell ... What makes this novel so powerful is the acknowledgement that intimacy does require a trust beyond logic, that 'ruin' can come just as easily to the guilty or the guiltless, and an embrace of the chaos is sometimes the only way to make it out to the other side.
It is in the juxtaposition of the two main characters’ points of view that Jemc finds new ground. Where as the traditional narrative requires one of the characters to play the 'straight man,' so that the spouse’s perspective is called into question consistently, Jemc has her married couple, James and Connie, begin to become more and more erratic as the novel progresses ... Jemc successfully juxtaposes the ghosts of the supernatural world with the ghosts of the natural world, and as a result, the reader must engage with the book to search for clues that might validate the claims of the narrators ... What separates a good supernatural story from schlock are the ways in which the author subtly approaches the subject. It is here where Jemc’s writing really shines. She holds back enough to keep the reader engaged in the construction of their own fears ... Simply put, we need more books like this, books that allow us fear without forcing themselves on us with a two dimensional ta-da.
The fun in the book is the way Jemc explodes all the haunted house clichés ... like all great haunting stories, the great thing is how quickly reality is overturned and shown to be the flimsy construct it is. Is the house exerting a horrible control over them? Are spirits following them even to as wholesome a place as the ice cream shop? Or is it their own minds that are closing each other out, and creating paranoid scenarios? ... By layering in a lot of different histories and making them all plausible, she creates a diffuse sense that any house in the town could be haunted. All of us have tragedies in our lives, right? ... Jemc gives us this empathy by leaning into Julie and James’ status as millennials. She lets us into their desperation, their dwindling resources, and the panic that comes with each new decision.
...a page-turning psychological thriller ... Jemc is masterful at conveying the couple's mounting paranoia. Ultimately, the house's 'grip' on their lives threatens the very foundation of their relationship and psyches ... as chilling as it is evocative.
All the spooky shit that happens is just on the edge of scary, just on the edge of believable, which makes it all the more terrifying. About halfway through the novel I was like, 'Okay, I GET IT. No one can never truly know another person—and that's WEIRD'...Though the novel just kept hammering away at that underlying premise, and though the characters felt flat, I still kept reading. The chapters, which are about two pages long on average, were just so brief and punchy that turning the page didn't seem like such a big risk. The sentences were quick, direct, and only occasionally decorated by the odd lyrical flourish. Their urgency drove me down the page and onto the next one ... Jemc creates great and real drama by alternating the perspectives: When bruises start showing up on Julie's body, the whole inside-the-relationship vs outside-the-relationship tension nearly snaps the book's spine in half.
A young couple named James and Julie are haunted by their relationship and themselves, just as much as external forces … Fear dwells and grows in the unknown, and that’s something Jemc explores in her book. How are we supposed to go about living our lives when there’s so much uncertainty and deception in the world? And if we can’t completely trust our partners, how can we trust ourselves? The longer James and Julie stay in the house, the harder it is to make sense of themselves, and that confusion seeps into their surroundings. Even everyday objects lose their meaning.
Yes, Chicago writer Jac Jemc’s new book, The Grip of It, is another haunted house novel. And it does contain most of the tropes of the genre: a young couple, Julie and James, moves into a house with a questionable history ...a fantastic — and genuinely scary — play on a story that’s been repeated to the point of devaluation ...besides its excellent title, which furthers any number of potential theories about the true nature of the haunting in the book — is Jemc’s blunt prose, which works best in her short-but-twisty sentences ...has fangs and talons. It sinks into your skin, and the pain changes the way you view everything around you.
...the real scare in this truly haunting novel stems from the way Jemc keeps the psychological tension of Julie and James’ relationship taut. Telling the story from alternating perspectives, Jemc reveals Julie’s and James’ growing distrust of each other and themselves even as she manipulates the novel's language to reflect the evolution of what is either psychosis or possession. Shivery and smart. A book that brings the legacy of Henry James into the modern world with great effect.
...an exhilarating and unsettling literary page-turner ... 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.
