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The Understory: A Novel (2014)

by Pamela Erens(Favorite Author)

4.3 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1935639854 (ISBN13: 9781935639855)

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Tin House Books

review 1: Holly Laycock (Tin House Marketing Intern): Following Pamela Erens’s successful second novel, The Virgins, Tin House will actually be publishing her first, The Understory (Spring 2014), and it is this story that I’ve been immersed in as of late. It’s about Jack Gorse, a man who’s appropriated his deceased uncle’s apartment, and the very particular life he leads in New York City. Particular because every day is centered around his routine–a walk to Central Park, a visit to the local bookstore, a lunch served by Mariam the waitress every day. Until his living situation is threatened and an attractive stranger begins to disrupt his meticulously planned life, Jack is just your average harmless introvert, but his neuroses begin to play out in unexpected and captivat... moreing ways. The observations of this thoughtful character are quite lovely at times: “In the spring and summer I watched my plants flower, but it was, perhaps, in winter that I loved them best, when their skeletons were exposed. Then I felt they had more to say to me, were not simply dressing themselves for the crowds. Stripped of their leaves, their identities showed forth stark, essential.” This stripping of layers happens to our narrator as well, making his unraveling all the more fascinating, and frightening.
review 2: The submission guidelines of many journals state that the editors don't want a work that's more backstory than story. They want a story with a traditional beginning, middle and end. Sometimes I find that discouraging, because those are the stories I like to read and write. The editors of those journals wouldn't want this novella, but, thankfully, one editor did, because with this well-written, honest, subtle, heartbreaking, aching work, the backstory (understory, a botanical term, fits well) is the story. less

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