06.03.2025 Regal House Publishing
“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
“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.” —David Bradley, author of The Chaneysville Incident
“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
“Miriam Gershow’s propulsive novel, Closer, is a fearless tour-de-force of imagination and empathy. Racist bullying of interracial high school sweethearts in a liberal, majority-white university town opens the story…Serious stuff, but one of Gershow’s many gifts is writing funny, making us love the relatable characters in Closer even when they flip-flop between perceptive and clued-out, and barrel toward tragedy.” —Mary Rechner, author of Marrying Friends and Nine Simple Patterns for Complicated Women
“Miriam Gershow has her finger on the pulse of high school angst and the forever adolescent who resides in every one of us. Her characters are so tender, flawed, and deeply real, we can’t help but root for them as they chase the alluring spell of true love... Children of all ages will fall prey to love’s illusions in this multi-generational tragedy.” —Aimee Liu, author of Glorious Boy and Gaining
“Miriam Gershow has written a work of extraordinary breadth and depth, filled with delicious scenes of carefree teenage infatuation and middleage lust. I’m awed by Gershow’s funny and detailed rendering of the twined lives of these likable dupes, none of whom see the dark future coming until it’s too late.” — Susanna Daniel, author of Stiltsville and Sea Creatures"
“With warmth and humor, Gershow deftly navigates a tangled web of crisscrossing landmines— family, friendship, class, race, adolescence, and love. It is a combustible stew that a lesser writer might shy from, but Gershow attacks these thorny topics head on. With multidimensional, nuanced characters and gorgeous, propulsive prose, this is a story that will stay with readers long after the shocking, heart-stopping end.” —Jennifer Oko, author of Just Emilia, Lying Together, and Gloss
“Miriam Gershow's moving novel Closer asks how we know and love one another. Her characters are vibrant and believable and the world they inhabit is an awful lot like our own — full of uneasy questions and loving approximations that feel like, but may not be, understanding." —Elizabeth Costello, author of The Good War
