A Shattering Portrait of American Life
In CLOSER, Miriam Gershow tackles a stunning breadth of social issues—race, religion, class, sexual identity, disability, infidelity—with remarkable finesse. She deftly navigates six distinct points of view, each belonging to wildly different characters, all rooted in a single community that could be anywhere in America.
Messy, Human, Unforgettable
These characters are achingly human: reckless, impulsive, brimming with messy emotions, from impressionable teenagers to adults who should know better. The narrative builds inexorably, plotlines tangling and thickening until everything finally explodes. As a reader, you’re left breathless, asking: “Holy shit, how did we get here?”
There are casualties and fallout, grief and reckoning—and yet there’s also hope. Because tomorrow always offers another chance to do better.
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Praise for Closer
“Miriam Gershow has written a novel of tremendous insight, unflinching realism, and transcendent generosity. Closer will keep you up late turning pages while its vivid and complex characters take up permanent residence in your head and heart. Bravo!”
—Antoine Wilson, author of Mouth To Mouth
“If the Obama presidency feels like a long ago innocent time in light of all that’s happened since, Miriam Gershow’s keenly observed, cleverly structured new novel Closer shows that the bitter seeds of division, intimidation, and unrest were growing then and have continued to regenerate since the founding of the country. What plays out in a public school in Oregon in 2015—racism, harassment, bullying, preventable death—feels like a microcosm of the turmoil that’s been tearing apart our national community. This riveting, high stakes, yet subtly political novel kept me up late turning pages and will stay with me for a very long time.”
—Porter Shreve, author of The End of the Book and The Obituary Writer
“This novel is amazing! Post-millennial culture pays lip service to diversity, but Closer gives meaning to the term. In powerful prose vignettes that read like poems, Gershow rounds up the usual suspects—race, gender, generation, religion, income, disability, sexuality—but gives voice and perspective to characters who insist on being human—often maddeningly so. Gershow both sounds the notes of our time and echoes Thoreau’s timeless ‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.’”
—David Bradley, author of The Chaneysville Incident