The Grip of It

Finalist for the Chicago Review of Books Fiction Award, Dan Chaon’s Best of 2017 pick in Publishers Weekly, one of Vol. 1 Brooklyn’s Best Books of 2017, a BOMB Magazine ‘Looking Back on 2017: Literature’ Pick, and one of Vulture’s 10 Best Thriller Books of 2017. Jac Jemc’s The Grip of It is a chilling literary horror novel about a young couple haunted by their newly purchased home. A chilling literary horror novel, Jac Jemc’s THE GRIP OF IT tells the story Julia and James, a young couple haunted by their new home. The move-prompted by James’s penchant for gambling, his inability to keep his impulses in check-is quick and seamless; both Julie and James are happy to leave behind their usual haunts and start afresh. But the house, which sits between lake and forest, has plans for the unsuspecting couple… The architecture becomes unrecognisable, decaying before their eyes. Stains contract and expand, mapping themselves onto Julie’s body in the form of bruises; mould taints the water that James pours from the sink. As the couple search for the source of their mutual torment, they become mired in the history of their peculiar neighbours and the mysterious previous residents of the house. Written in eerie, powerful prose, THE GRIP OF IT is an enthralling and psychologically intense novel that deals in questions of home: how we make it and how it in turn makes us, inhabiting the bodies and the relationships we cherish.