Synopses & Reviews
The Understory--the debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of The Virgins --is the haunting portrayal of Jack Gorse, an ex-lawyer, now unemployed, who walls off his inner life with elaborate rituals and routines. Every day he takes the same walk from his Upper West Side apartment to the Brooklyn Bridge. He follows the same path through Central Park; he stops to browse in the same bookstore, to eat lunch in the same diner. Threatened with eviction from his longtime apartment and caught off-guard by an attraction to a near stranger, Gorse takes steps that lead to the dramatic dissolution of the only existence he's known. As the narrative alternates between his days in New York City and his present life in a Vermont Buddhist Monastery, The Understory unfolds as both a mystery and a psychological study, revealing that repression and self-expression can be equally destructive.
Review
I am amazed and moved by Pamela Erenss
The Understory. It brings to mind (and stands up well next to) such literary ancestors as Hamsun's Hunger, or Beckett's stories of the evicted, but it is
uniquely tender in its treatment of the isolated mind's quest to keep alive what is most radiant and most fragile in the face of the brutal catastrophe of reality. Erens brings extraordinary powers of empathy and technical mastery to the character of Jack Gorsenormally the person we pass on the street and, after a token moment of pity, attempt to forget as rapidly as possible. In this book there is no turning away from him, or more accurately and terribly, from the world as he perceives it.”
Franz Wright, author of Walking to Martha's Vineyard, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
This is a strange, haunting meditation on aloneness and the melancholy of frustrated love, written knowingly about a character bereft of self-knowledge. The language is precise and considered, the mood sustained, the effect at once narrative and poetic. A lovely, elegant debut novel.”
Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon, winner of the National Book Award, and Far From the Tree, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award
A wonderfully controlled portrait of a contemporary Underground Man a man who buries his life beneath the normal social interactions of modern-day Manhattan, so that what is inside of him might stay buried too.”
Jonathan Dee, author of The Privileges, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize
Pamela Erens's The Understory is at once an exquisite portrait of a man driven by forces beyond his control, an homage to Manhattan's secret places, and a deftly braided narrative that keeps the reader hungry to find out what happens next.”
Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah, winner of the American Book Award
"Erens follows this haggard, lonely man in his unremarkable every day without missing a detail...This solitary man who cannot connect even in a crowd, eventually implodes, and explodes, and the sense of following him through this process is a literary meditation I will long not forget. It is for this kind of fine literature that I hunger all my reading life, and find all too rarely."
Zinta Aistars, Gently Read Literature
Hauntingly abject
skillfully rendered
a sensitive, restrained debut.”
Publishers Weekly
Mesmerizing
a universal human cry for love.”
ForeWord Magazine
An elegant, understated study of physical and psychic dislocations
artfully detailed and beautifully rendered.”
the Chicago Tribune
"This is storytelling at its finest, lightest and most complex. I enjoyed every moment of the time Jack and I spent together. I let my tea go cold as he talked. I hope one day we meet again, although, because of the way things go, I doubt we will."
LitReactor
Not your typical debut
The soul of this novel is its meditative lyricism, rendered in language that is as exquisite as it is penetrating.”
Small Spiral Notebook
"The novel is a psychological study with an ending that will shock you."
BookTrib
The Understory comes to a gripping finale. Erens
is a very talented writer, and this slender volume is a welcome addition to contemporary fiction.”
Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide
This novel derives its power from Erens' ability to create a character who is simultaneously repulsive and sympathetic
. [She has] given us insight into the very human desire to make this world and our lives matter.”
El Paso Times
Pamela Erenss novel is a letter bomb of a book, pulsing with savage potency.”
The Elegant Variation
We have such a deep understanding of and sympathy for the engaging but troubled Jack that we willingly follow him into the dark corners of his wounded psyche.”
Rain Taxi
In a book that begs for stellar acting in a cinematic treatment, the fascinated reader bears witness as events follow a collision course.”
Booklist
Synopsis
Set in New York City and in a Buddhist monastery in rural Vermont, The Understory is both a mystery and a psychological study and reveals that repression and self-expression can be equally destructive. Ex-lawyer Jack Gorse walls off his inner life with elaborate rituals and routines. Threatened with eviction from his longtime apartment and caught off-guard by an attraction to a near stranger, he takes steps that lead to the dramatic dissolution of the existence he's known.
Synopsis
Set in New York City and in a Buddhist monastery in rural Vermont, The Understory is both a mystery and a psychological study and reveals that repression and self-expression can be equally destructive.
About the Author
Pamela Erens was raised in Chicago and attended Phillips Exeter Academy and Yale University, where she concentrated on literary theory and women's studies. For many years she worked as a magazine editor, including at Glamour. Her editing and freelance journalism have won national awards. Erens's first novel, The Understory, published in 2007, was the winner of the Ironweed Press Fiction Prize and a finalist for both the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for First Fiction and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Erens has also published short fiction, poetry, and essays in literary journals and magazines ranging from Chicago Reviewand New England Review to O: The Oprah Magazine. She is the recipient of two New Jersey State Council on the Arts fellowships in fiction and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference.