I must have held a copy (almost certainly the 2011 reissue from Soho Press, with its scratchy and disturbing cover) in my hands at some point, must have read the jacket copy or a synopsis somewhere, but despite loving both the Claire DeWitt books and horror fiction, I never took the leap. Though it was originally published in 2003, I first encountered the book in 2012, after finishing the first of Gran’s Claire DeWitt novels and wondering what else she’d written. It is, without a doubt, one of the best slices of horror fiction I’ve ever read. Sara Gran’s Come Closer is one such book for me: I was scared of this book before I read it, I was scared while I was reading it, and I remain scared of it now. Usually it’s just because you’re not ‘feeling it’ at whatever particular moment–but sometimes, a book can give you the heebie-jeebies before you’ve even touched it. The avoidance is rarely for nefarious reasons, of course. They wait, looming in the background, for their appointed time. You choose to wait on them instead of picking them up when they’re first recommended to you, or when you first hear about them online, or when you first flip open a copy at the bookstore. There are some books that spend a long time making their way onto your to-read shelf.
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