So, what could shake them to their core? Jemc introduces us to The Grip of It with a small treatise on doubt by Wittenstein: But they are rational and proactive in confronting their problems. So they have a past that ushers in enough tension to get the ball rolling. James turns out to be a gambler who bets away a good deal of money before they both feel that they need a fresh start in a different home, away from the city. Julie starts their romance by finding James on Craigslist. They are as prepared as humans can be for residential eccentricities.

Through Jemc’s alternating first-person narratives we learn that protagonists Julie and James Khoury are aware of haunted house clichés.

So begins Jac Jemc’s terrifying novel The Grip of It, a novel one doesn’t so much as read as one orienteers. Maybe we hear it as soon as we unlock the door….“You don’t hear it? It’s like a mouth harp.” Maybe we move in and we don’t hear the intonation for a few days. The whole enterprise is an act in suspended belief, a prolonged dousing of disorientation that starts at the door: So little human activity is as jarring as moving. This chain is just one of those objects humans wonder about when they find them after they have moved houses, as I have just done. An examination of the basement where the chain ends and begins again reveals nothing. It’s neat and old and mysteriously low to the ground next to the built-in hutch. And there is a dial, a hefty metal switch that only moves a centimeter. On the pulley, three words circle, raised in the brown metal: Closed, Open, and Check. The silver chain comes up from somewhere under the wooden living room floor and returns to the same place. The Grip of It by Jac Jemc (FSG Originals, 2017) Reviewed by Michelle Mitchell-FoustĪn old chain spools around a metal pulley next to a swinging kitchen door.

The grip of it by jac jemc