Close Enough to Touch presents a colorful assembly of characters, most of whom are sketched for us as succinct, comic caricatures by the narrator, Matt Moran. Matt, whose voice and perceptions dominate the novel, is the most fully realized character, followed closely by Margaret Chasen. Although not treated with the quick, reductive technique of caricature, Dory Gunderson, as well as Matt's father, stepmother, and grandmother are all drawn in more limited detail.

Matt is athletic, intelligent, and introverted, a loner by nature made more so by Dory's death. As a removed observer of his suburban world, he has a gift for seeing the comic and ironic elements of life but without becoming bitter or cynical. He exhibits a talent for the quick, witty, and sometimes trenchant generalization. He comments on Dory's upper-crust friends that "They aren't carrying money. The rich never do." And of...