This Close: Book summary and reviews of This Close by Jessica Francis Kane

This Close Summary

A graceful, moving new collection by the author of The Report

How close can we come to love, success, happiness, forgiveness?

An older woman, irritated with her wealthy young neighbor's yard "improvements," offers a corner of her lawn to a Croatian immigrant who wants a vegetable garden. A recent college graduate living in New York City finds himself in a strangely entangled friendship with his dry cleaner and her son. A daughter accompanies her father to Israel, where, seeing a new side of him away from her mother, she makes an unusual bargain.

Through thirteen stories, some stand-alone, others woven with linked characters, Kane questions the tensions between friendship and neighborliness, home and travel, family and ambition. In writing filled with wit and humor and incredible poignancy, she deftly reveals the everyday patterns that, over time, can swerve a life off course.

This Close Reviews

"Kane's second collection of stories (after The Report) is steeped in family and community anxiety and often dazzle...Kane inhabits the psyche of those at risk, with terrific results." - Publishers Weekly

"Intriguing, delicate, graceful, and deeply moving, this is a collection to be read and pondered over. It will draw readers into worlds both foreign and familiar while turning the everyday into something extraordinary." - Booklist

"Kane's second collection shows the author's talent for dissecting the subtle dynamics of family life...The stories in [This Close] have an appeal reminiscent of Chekhov's plays." - Library Journal

"The stories are quiet - Kane has little interest in stylistic pyrotechnics, flashy plots or formal play - but they are subtle, persuasive and psychologically complex. Another worthy book from a fine writer." - Kirkus Reviews

The information about This Close shown above was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's online-magazine that keeps our members abreast of notable and high-profile books publishing in the coming weeks. In most cases, the reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author of this book and feel that the reviews shown do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, please send us a message with the mainstream media reviews that you would like to see added.

This Close Reader Reviews

Click here and be the first to review this book!

Jessica Francis Kane's first novel, The Report, was a Barnes & Noble Discover selection and a finalist for both the Center for Fiction's 2010 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize and the Indie Booksellers' Choice Award. She is a contributor to The Morning News and lives in New York City.