The Understory

by Pamela Erens

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.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Novels, Ebooks, Literature

200 pages, Paperback

First published October 18, 2007

About the author

Pamela's fifth book, MIDDLEMARCH AND THE IMPERFECT LIFE, out April 2022, is part of Ig Publishing's Bookmarked series on books that have shaped an author's writing and life.

Her previous book, her first for children, was published in June 2021. MATASHA (igKids) is for readers ages 10 to 14. The novel received a starred Kirkus review, and Meg Wolitzer in the New York Times called it "thoroughly winning.... The many pleasures of this novel include its empathy and poker-faced wit, and the charms of its main character."

Apart from these, Pamela has published three novels for adults. The most recent, ELEVEN HOURS, was brought out by Tin House Books (US) and Atlantic Books (UK) in 2016 and by Keter (Israel) in 2017.

ELEVEN HOURS was named a Best Book of 2016 by NPR, The New Yorker, Kirkus, Literary Hub, Entropy, and the Irish Independent. It received starred reviews from Kirkus, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal, and was lauded by publications ranging from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to specialized literary sites such as Book Riot and The Millions.

Pamela's second novel, THE VIRGINS (Tin House, 2013), was a New York Times Book Review and Chicago Tribune Editors' Choice and was named a Best Book of 2013 by The New Yorker, The New Republic, Library Journal and Salon. The novel was a finalist for the John Gardner Book Award for the best book of fiction published in 2013.

A UK edition (John Murray) of THE VIRGINS appeared in 2014, and a German one C.H. Beck) in 2015.

In 2014, Tin House Books reissued Pamela's debut novel, THE UNDERSTORY (Ironweed Press, 2007), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing.

Pamela is the recipient of 2015 fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference and Wesleyan Writers Conference, and a 2014 fellowship from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. Her short fiction, reviews, and essays have appeared in a wide variety of literary, cultural, and mainstream publications, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Slate, Tin House, Los Angeles Review of Books, Aeon, The Millions, The New York Times, Salon, Elle, Vogue, and O, the Oprah Magazine. For many years Pamela was an editor at Glamour magazine.

"Everyone who has the good fortune to pick up one of Erens' three novels becomes a fan. Whether writing about teenagers at boarding school (The Virgins), two mothers struggling together through labor (Eleven Hours), or a loner at the end of his tether (The Understory), Erens has a gift for making you want to spend time in her characters' company. Then you want to scout her other fans to discuss your good fortune of discovering her talents." — Reader's Digest, "23 Contemporary Writers You Should Have Read By Now" (2020)

Reviews

[Teresa · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Understory is a slight novel, merely a little over 140 pages. But don’t let that deter you; it’s also one of the finest novels I’ve read in a long, long time.

The narrator – Jack Gorse -- is a damaged man, who once had a promising future as the only son of an affluent theater couple and, in his own right, an up-and-coming lawyer. Today he lives alone, illegally, in a soon-to-be-demolished apartment building without heat or creature comforts. The only thing that keeps him going is his structure and routines and his walks through Central Park. Likely an obsessive-compulsive, he becomes nonplussed when anything interrupts his simple life.

And soon, something does, when he meets up with an architect named Patrick, who brings to the surface a lot of confused feelings he is ill-equipped to deal with.

So what is an understory? As Jack reflects on one of his walks: “I like bare as well as lush, probably better. What speaks to me most is close to the ground: the shrubs and vines, rather than the great elms, oaks, and maples. The understory, as botanists call it…It is the shrubs that allow the park to survive.”

Jack’s story is the understory of New York; he is one of the easily discountable individuals who, with his bare life, is akin to the shrubs and vines that allow the rest of the city to move on. He is overlooked and under-appreciated and is only interested in living, not thriving. In many ways, he is “at one” with nature.

From the start, the reader feels the vibrations of a life that is increasingly becoming destabilized. The plotting is almost inevitable, and flows organically from that premise. The narration is pitch-perfect and Ms. Erens manages to navigate that difficult task of building sympathy and compassion for someone who, through his actions and his confusion, may not be all that likeable. This is a wonderful novel without a word or a scene that’s misplaced. Read it!

[Tara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is another book I am getting to late, but the subject is timeless. What a gem. I can't say enough about this writer's prose style. She is a master of writing about nothing. I would love to have her skill of taking a character and moving him/her around during a quiet day with little going on but descriptions that are so rich and interior thoughts that are so profound you just keep reading and reveling in the perfect flow. Erens is a highly intelligent writer who knows the right balance between knowledge and feeling. Every sentence is perfection. And as an editor I can rarely say that....

Her main character is one of the most fully imagined, realistic characters I've ever come across in fiction. Reminds me of "Bartleby, the Scrivener," by Herman Melville. He is flawed, but you get to know him so well, you forgive him on many fronts for all his frailties and passivity. You want to shake him and wish him well, even when he does something violent.

I highly recommend this to anyone who loves literary fiction and the psychology of the human race. You won't be disappointed.

[Claire Fuller · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow - what a debut. The writing is lucid and understated and tells the story of Jack an ex-lawyer who has been living illegally in his dead uncle's apartment in New York for fourteen years. He has compulsive tendencies - visiting Brooklyn bridge every evening, a certain secondhand bookstore, and the same diner for lunch every day. When his new landlord wants to evict him, Jack meets and becomes obsessed with the architect employed to redesign his building. Each chapter alternates between this narrative and one from a few months on when Jack has left New York and is staying in a Buddhist monastery tending their bonsai trees (poorly). I loved it. (Only a tiny niggle - that the last chapter or so felt more rushed than the rest of the book.)

[JimZ · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has a title that has its meaning as “a layer of vegetation beneath the main canopy of a forest.” Apparently Central Park is built on soil that supports a good deal of such undergrowth which in turn supports the trees, or at least some of them, in the park. I am not sure why the author chose this name for her book.

The protagonist, a weird bird by the name of John F. Ronan Gorse, lives in an apartment in New York City that his uncle lived in, but the uncle is dead and Gorse has not paid rent in 15 years. He seems loathe to do anything approximating work…although he got a law degree many years ago, and briefly worked at a law firm Watteau and Charles. He was fired for being a total laze (“He kept me on for more than a year before being firing me for tardiness, unexplained absences, failure to complete assigned projects, and unauthorized reading of Aeschylus and Aristotle). He reminisces about a boyhood friend, Henry, and that takes up a chunk of the book… And there’s a Buddhist monastery involved and bonsai trees…

I didn’t like this book sorry to say. The protagonist seemed like a ne’er do well and I did not like him. People who knew of him at best tolerated him. He became infatuated with an architect Patrick who was in charge of renovating the apartment building that Gorse lived in, as Gorse was thinking he could fight an eviction notice…and Gorse became angry with Patrick at the end when he realized that Patrick had taken a picture of him with a camera some time before when he wasn’t prepared…and wanted to get the shot specifically when he wasn’t trying to pose for the camera. Because unbeknownst to Gorse it was part of a photography project he was working on.

He heard the complaint in my voice and looked at me in surprise. “I’ve been working on this project.” He said. “I document people like you, people who are getting pushed out of their apartments. Mostly in Manhattan, sometimes in other places.”
‘People like you.’ I took this in a for a moment. Then I asked, “Whatever for?”
I asked him what he did with all these pictures.
He smiled shyly. “Actually, I hope one day I’ll have a book, or a show, or something. I’d like to think they’re good work.”
‘Good work?’

And then things start spiraling out of control in Gorse’s head and he decides to tell Patrick that he loves him.
So, does Patrick reciprocate such feelings? No spoilers from me! 😊

Here is more info on the author...she has written two more books in addition to this debut novel and they won quite a few accolades: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamela_...

[Nichole · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lately, I've been busy. This season, demands from all directions have taken their toll on my reading. It's hard to keep up. That's why I'm grateful for this brief time to review one of the best books I've ever read. The book is The Understory, and the almost-unknown author is Pamela Erens. This will be a tiny review, which is a shame because this book is profound.

The loner protagonist Jack Gorse is convincingly-realized as a failed lawyer with o.c. tendencies. He is consumed by his habits: twins, Central Park gardens, his favorite bookstore, and his daily Brooklyn Bridge route. When ruthless Life ultimately shatters his structure, the results are tragic.

Erens's attention to the odd inner life of this repressed character is delivered with precision and perfect sympathy. I was right there with Jack, sharing his inner world, his loneliness, his sense of being different, thanks to Erens's thoughtful prose. Every paragraph mattered; not a word read out of place. The story's even-handed progression from calm to catastrophe is uninterrupted and flawless. Jack Gorse - secretive, compulsive, yet intelligent - is The Understory. He is the drab undergrowth of glamorous New York City: pure, unheralded, plain. Erens's formula for this story - balance, a sense of alienation, true-to-life imagery, befitting metaphors, halting conversations - lasts from beginning to end. She really has a gift. It's a crime she's not more popular because she's the real deal.

I regret it took me this long to find her.

5 stars

[Toby · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was struggling to describe exactly what it is about the writing of Pamela Erens that I find so compelling, so enjoyable, flailing at ideas such as “very few paragraph breaks and a complete control of sentence structure” which just made me sound absurd. I read a lot, I consider myself somewhat educated in the art of the novel, I read countless reviews and enjoy discussion on the form as well as the subject and that was the best I could come up with. But then I casually noted the front cover pull quote from Andrew Solomon and all became clear. What I wanted to say about Pamela Erens, and what has already been said by Andrew Solomon is that her language is precise and considered, the mood sustained, the effect at once narrative and poetic. See? It’s easy when somebody shows you the way. Out of nowhere I think I have become a huge fan.

[Fionnuala]

Sometimes I find the star rating system frustrating when trying to analyse my experience of reading a particular book. Two stars or 'It was ok' is what I've settled for here, perched in that no man's land between 'didn't like' and 'liked'. 'Didn't like' is so subjective anyway, so judgemental and final that I try never to use it, especially when the review concerns new writing as is the case here.
**Spoiler alert**
Certain aspects of this novella were intriguing. The potted history of Central Park, for instance and the slightly longer digression on bonsai management. But those themes, like the periodic references to twins and certain tenets of Buddhism, promised more than they finally delivered. Was the narrator constantly seeking his own twin? Was his flight to the monastery about remorse? None of this was clear. I usually like subtlety but perhaps an author can be too subtle sometimes. Yes, I could see some parallels between Jack (what an unlikely name for this shadow of a man) and the bonsai, the author underlines how bonsai have their roots lopped off and are forced to live a stunted life, but I wasn't sure if this was intended or purely coincidental. That brings me to what bothered me most while reading this book; I was never sure if it was going anywhere significant and when I reached the end, I was still wondering.

[Kasa Cotugno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes a novel comes along that reminds a reader of why they love reading. Thanks to a recommendation, I started this and read it in almost one sitting. One of the elements is -- I love when New York City is made a character. The encroachment of gentrification threatens Jack Gorse's solitary way of life. His routines are unchangeable, and the fact that he is living illegally in a rent controlled upper west side flat doesn't change that. For years, he has repressed his true nature, but finds all that shaken and his existence threatened when a kind young man, architect for the refurbishment of the brownstone, catches his imagination. How it unfolds takes only a few pages, but as with poets, Erens chooses each word carefully, paying close attention to its effect on the narrative and its relationship to the words around it. Highly recommended.

[Debbie Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a truly outstanding novel. Brilliantly written. Pam Erens is such a talent, so gifted. Outstanding voice and gorgeous prose. She has the ability to crawl right inside the skin of her character and speak to you with such honesty and detail, the world kind of surrounds you.

The language, the metaphors, the pace are all synchronized to create a feeling of loneliness, as personified by a disturbed man named Jack Gorse. Time passes, change happens and yet he stands still. In loneliness, he obsesses, he craves for intimacy, fantasizes about a stranger, longs for time to freeze. Like the flora and fauna in Central Park, he wants time to be protected. But it is not.

While with Jack, nothing is produced, knowlege is consumed--not just with books, but also with his senses. Jack, in his weird way, takes in the world.
He-- at least in his mind-- is the understory. But understory is not too stable.

A perfect novella. Perfect length. Beautifully written. Elegant in theme. And filled with heart. A very compassionate writer.

I truly look forward to more of her work.

Added to my highly recommended list.

[Hayden Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

ahh, i loved this. until the last two chapters, when i stopped believing what was happening. but the first thirteen of fifteen chapters were stunning.

[Jason Pettus · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

(*Please note that I read and reviewed this under the impression that it's a brand-new book, when in fact I was just reading the brand-new second edition; it was originally published in 2007, with this new edition being published as a promotional tie-in with Erens' newest novel, Eleven Hours, which we will also be reviewing later this year.)

Usually, quiet novels about intellectual introverts are a real hit-and-miss proposition for me; but I have to say that I really loved Pamela Erens' take on the subject, the beautifully done The Understory, mainly because she looks at such a person from an outsider's perspective and presents him as a sort of broken human we should avoid trying to be, instead of the "Proust-reading hero battling a world of morons" that so many of these other books present such characters. A slim novel that's just as much about Manhattan as it is about the people being discussed, and especially those overlooked corners of Manhattan that make it such a friendly city for intellectual introverts (the dusty used bookstores, the forgotten '50s diners, the rundown rent-controlled apartments that millions walk by each day without ever giving a second thought), this is the world our OCD narrator Jack inhabits almost exclusively, a man with a minute-by-minute daily schedule that hasn't changed in years (as a great example, it takes him nearly a month to accept the idea of the subway system moving from tokens to fare cards), whose life is thrown into utter turmoil when the building where he's been illegally living for a pittance (taking over a dead uncle's apartment without ever resigning the lease himself) is sold to a developer who wants to gut it and turn it into high-end condos. It's an unbelievably sad and deep character study, of a man who does things like casually realize his birthday was the previous week and that he had completely forgotten to acknowledge it, a man who has his photo taken by a "People of New York" type photographer and can literally not recognize his own face when looking at it; and it's a devastating look at the types of aggressively antisocial people who inhabit big cities in the millions around the world, all the more powerful for being written in such a subtle, poetic way. It will absolutely not be everyone's cup of tea, which is why it's getting only a so-so general score; but it's a must-read for anyone who enjoys delicately written character studies of the kinds of people generally overlooked by history at large, and it comes strongly recommended today specifically to those types of readers.

Out of 10: 8.8, or 9.8 for fans of quiet and poetic character studies

[Myfanwy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Gorse/Ronan the protagonist of Pamela Erens’s smashing debut novel, The Understory, is a man obsessed: with twins, with vegetation, with books, with his routine, and with a kind-hearted architect named Patrick. He is also searching, it seems, for that other part of himself—the other half of himself. At one point, he hopes he will find that other within Patrick, but really that other is within him:

“I imagine that I am a conjoined creature; two souls wrapped into one, and after a while this thought lulls me to sleep.”

Basically, he is unwittingly his own twin—and so gives himself two names. Everything is connected in Jack’s world and there are no randomness of events something he’s believed since childhood:

“Every plant—everything, I was suddenly sure—was related, everything was part of some larger group, some bigger whole.”

In keeping with the twin-ness of things, the thread of connection, the book is told in interweaving chapters of past and present as we follow Jack through his troubles of the not so distant past (the events leading up to his eviction), his troubles of the present (he is in hiding in a Buddhist monastery in Vermont and they are wary of him), and his overarching troubles (the outcome of his involvement with Patrick).

Despite his odd (and sometimes scary) behavior, Jack will win you over. You will wish him well. You will want him not to fail. And in the end, when you know his dark secrets and what horrible things he has done, you will hope that he will have a brighter tomorrow.

In short: a masterful, graceful book that will often leave you breathless. Read it.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Don’t be fooled by The Understory’s low page count or the fact that it begins at a Buddhist monastery in rural Vermont. Pamela Erens’s novel is a letter bomb of a book, pulsing with savage potency. Its elegant prose, deliberate descriptions, and unhurried pace mask the sinister sensibilities percolating within the protagonist.

The Understory describes Jack Gorse’s eviction from his apartment in New York City. For most novels, this would mark the beginning of the story, but here it comprises the entire narrative arc. Erens reveals the details with care and deliberation so that we can absorb the implications—even though they elude the protagonist.

Gorse is a strange fellow ruled by obsessions. A former lawyer, he spends his days reading books and wandering New York’s Central Park, but he’s anything but carefree. His days are ordered by a rigorous schedule to which he is compelled to adhere. His interests--from horticulture to twins—invariably become subjects of intense infatuation. When a friendly architect who has been hired to renovate Gorse’s building makes an uncharacteristically kind gesture, Gorse unwittingly draws him into his web.

Because his compulsive behavior feels normal to Gorse, it feels normal to the reader as well – in much the same way that Meursault’s actions in Camus’s The Stranger seem exceedingly ordinary even when they are not. Gorse’s restless imagination provides the reader with a plethora of information about a wide range of subjects even as it drives the story to its grim conclusion. The Understory is both an ode to New York City and a psychological portrait of a life on the margins.

[Gina Whitlock · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a thoughtful and beautiful book about a man, once a lawyer, who ends up in life walling off his emotions to become a recluse. His world starts spinning out of control when he has to leave his apartment because of demolition. Erens knows how to write; she takes this character and moves him through days with descriptions of his interior thoughts that are so profound, you must keep reading. Every sentence is important.

[Zinta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many, many years have passed since I read Knut Hamsun’s Hunger. I read it in its Latvian translation, a young writer eager to learn from the masters—and the Danish writer Hamsun was that. It was a novel about nothing, really. No car chases, no maddening mysteries, no ravishing love stories, no epiphanies. It was a simple story of survival—a homeless man coping with hunger—but it has remained with me all these decades later while so many other books I’ve read have faded into oblivion. It was a book touched with greatness.

I recall Hamsun’s Hunger now because in reading the slim novel called The Understory by Pamela Erens, winner of the Ironweed Press Fiction Prize, I sensed the same effect. Yes, the same touch of literary greatness. This, too, was a story about nothing. It is simplicity itself; not even a story, but an “understory.” The story behind the story, you might say, the diving deep into the mind and heart and soul of a man. There is little action, almost all the recording of observation, the gradual coiling and tightening of a spring, and all leading up to a stunning conclusion—that one moment of action—that is the perfection coming together of all that we have read to that point.

As in Hamsun’s masterpiece, we experience truth, as a human being experiences truth that is found in the minutiae of the every day. Life is like this, after all. The earth shattering upheavals and volcanic happenings are remarkable enough, easy to nail down on paper, memorable (or not) without even trying, but genius enters when one can create reality sharper almost than reality itself. Erens follows this haggard, lonely man in his unremarkable every day without missing a detail, and so brings him into the room where we sit, brings us into his room where he lives his solitary life, and lets us taste of it. He is poor, he is alone, he is a child abandoned by his parents through a car accident that took their lives, and so has learned to live in this quiet, unobtrusive way. He lives a life that happens mostly inside his mind. He reads and mulls over what he has read as a gourmet savors every bite of an exquisite meal. Indeed, when he is evicted from his home—an apartment where he has lived for 15 years as something of an imposter of his deceased uncle of similar name on a $500 monthly stipend left to him in a will—he wonders how is it that we do not value the thinkers in our society? Only the doers. Someone has to read all the books? Someone has to think all the thoughts? He is that someone.

Even when something does happen in this man’s days, it moves in a kind of slow motion, giving us time to note all the details of the scene, evoke the emotions one might have living the moment in real time rather than sound bite. We watch the building burn. We watch him resist leaving the ashen shell of his home, living among that ash when all others have moved elsewhere. We see him creep into odd emotions of need and want, not falling in love, but more a kind of cell by cell transforming into a man who wants another man. His presence in the room, just that. We settle into the cramped corners of his brain as he becomes obsessed.

So there it is, all of it, after all, but without the distraction of special effects. There the story of survival, the story of loss, and grief, the love story, too. Distilled into effervescent purity. A moment in the abbey, where he takes refuge for a while, is fully as remarkable as a moment of encountering human need at its most base.

“Night is the worst time. After the long regimentation of the day, the enforced silences, the men want to talk. At first it doesn’t matter what about: TV, movies, travel, jobs. I lie on my side on my mattress as the words pool around me, reciting to myself the botanical classifications for peach, cherry, apple. Magnoliophyta, Magnoliopsida, Rosales, Rosaceae… I smell the smell of other bodies: stale skin, flatulence, cologne. I long to open the windows and let the fresh air sweep the smells away, sweep the bodies away, too. Gradually one man drops out of the conversation, then another. Soon there will be only two men left speaking. And these two—they are not the same two every night—will drop their voices, speak in an intimate murmur. Perhaps they are only gossiping about one of the monks. Perhaps they are complaining about the food. But no, there is a reticence that lets me know that they are trying, clumsily, to reach each other.” (page 27)

He is obsessed with two. Two in connection, twins, kindred souls, brothers, lovers, even as he himself is profoundly one. 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.

[Chris Tarry · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book I sat down to try and write a short little something, anything with the same voice and language and attention to detail. I failed miserably. It's like a kind of magic I can't crack, beautifully patient and entirely Erens.

[Rachael]

Wow - this is the second book in a row that I'm not going to rate. Because here's the thing: it's very well-written, but I hated it. Gorgeous prose, but it left a bad taste in my mouth. Unpleasant protagonist who is very well-developed. So what do you do with that? Note it and move on, I guess.

[Elisabeth · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nothing particularly special here, it was just okay. The author certainly has a good grasp on writing, but overall this one was a pretty solid meh for me.

[Steve Chisnell · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I was a bit disappointed with the closing of this short work (it seemed like Erens felt compelled to add a dramatic act/action to "cap" the plot), the slow burn examination of the protagonist's lifestyle and tenement events, the fairly astute handling of mental/emotional illness, the unreliable narration, all work well together to make this a compelling read, and it is especially powerful as a first novel.

[Josie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the process of reading this, but nothing from it stuck with me.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Gorse is a complicated man. The particularity of his nature is revealed in the book’s opening paragraph as he describes an episode of curdled cream in his self-serve coffee—an episode that led him forever after to drink his coffee black and obsessively double check each time he fills his cup.

We soon learn that he is also facing eviction from a rent-controlled apartment in New York City, an apartment he has illegally inhabited for years following the death of a similarly named uncle. The slow, cold war of attrition that ensues leaves Jack the only remaining tenant, and the architect hired to oversee the project his only human contact.

The ever unfolding layers of Jack’s personality reveal a man both intelligent and oddly naïve, shy and slyly voyeuristic, cunning and emotionally guileless. He is a fascinating man. He is also a quiet man, but even though this story is a first-person narrative, I would hesitate to label it a quiet book. The Understory crackles with the energy of compulsion and unrequited obsession that is slowly and meticulously revealed in a way that could be called meditative (for its gradually deepening understanding), except for the fact that Jack fails miserably at meditation. No, the true genius in the storytelling here is that Jack reveals his deepest self, without actually revealing his deepest self. He simply recounts, while we see what he cannot.

In fact, it’s this continual dichotomous tendency that serves up the book’s delicious tension. Gorse is beset by a stubborn ennui that plays against a dramatic narrative backdrop of eviction notices, narrowly escaped fires, and a culminating scene of violence that is as sudden and unexpected as it is dramatically right.

The Understory is a book that relentlessly and incrementally pulls you forward on intelligent tenterhooks till you reach a conclusion that resonates long after the turning of the final page.

[Stephen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Usually I won't lower a rating on fiction solely because I actively hate the denouement (fiction should be free thus) but this book, like Atonement, pushed me that way. Another example is We Need to Talk About Kevin, which I hated.
I try to rate fiction for how I admire the writing but also for the pleasure or insight or enlightenment it gave me. The writing in this book is admirable, but it lost two stars on the other dimensions.

The first 95% of the book is an intimate portrait of an urban eccentric wholly detached from other people, with echoes of the protagonist of Notes from Underground or Bartleby. He is obsessive-compulsive (think of Jack Nicholson's character in the movie As Good as it Gets) but more reticent, less mean, than that character.

Living as an illegal tenant in the rent-controlled apartment of an uncle who died fifteen years ago, Jack Gorse faces ever more desperate circumstances when the new landlord begins a campaign to get out all the remaining tenants so he can remodel the building. A tenuous lifeline to a possible relationship develops when a man comes to photograph the apartment. Sadly and predictably this turns to stalking, which leads to a shattering conclusion out of character and damned unpleasant.

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

More a sketch than a fully fleshed-out novel, The Understory is a sad tale of isolation and hard luck that succeeds best as a portrait of New York around 2005, with much of Manhattan already taken over by rich new development schemes. The narrator, a lost soul who has been living illegally for years in an apartment rented to his long-dead uncle, is part of the "understory" of the city--a biological term that refers to the shrubs and vines that live closer to the ground than trees.

Along with Central Park, a few other corners of the city get some lovely, close observation. Especially rewarding for its (now historical) accuracy is a page about the Bowery: "Something about this neighborhood, still untouched by improvement, always riveted me. You could glimpse the taproot of the city here, Manhattan's origins in industry and manual labor. . . . I moved on again, and the street signs and shop signs gradually acquired a subscript of Chinese characters as the neighborhood of the old working class blended into the neighborhood of the new one."

[Ryo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The obsessive-compulsive, solitary narrator in this book could've been so annoying and frustrating to stay with even for a short 169 pages, but he somehow grew on me, despite all of his sometimes extreme stubbornness, maybe because I can see a little of myself in him. The short, odd-numbered chapters at the monastery didn't really do it for me, since I kept wanting to get back to the even-numbered chapters that contain the bulk of the narrative, but I get that the quiet scenes at the monastery are supposed to be sort of a contrast to the hectic life in New York and the narrator's attempts to reform himself or maybe just escape. The plot moves along steadily, at least in the even-numbered chapter, but the ending was too abrupt for me. The narrator does something totally out of character, maybe because of all that repressed feeling building up, but it also seemed like a way to abruptly end the story.

[Erika Dreifus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was lucky enough to receive a signed copy of this book from the author (in exchange for a signed copy of QUIET AMERICANS). I'm still absorbing the novel's quiet power, which pulled me into the mind and experience of its first-person narrator. I'll quote shamelessly from the blurb provided by Andrew Solomon: "This is a strange, haunting meditation on aloneness and the melancholy of frustrated love. The language is precise and considered, the mood sustained, the effect at once narrative and poetic." Yes. Exactly.

As an aside: I read this book at a time when a new anthology of writing about New York's Central Park was making the news. If Pamela Erens wasn't asked to contribute to that book, it has to be only because the editor didn't know about The Understory. Central Park is practically another character here. Beautifully done.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was my book club's July book choice. When I saw the ratings and read the reviews, I was excited to read this book. However, I was underwhelmed. In fact, I was a bit disappointed. The last 30 pages, in my opinion, were the most exciting. And while there are many readers who found themselves rooting for or sympathizing with the main character, I did not. I did not find him likeable at all and found him rather lazy. He is a smart and talented man who didn't feel like applying himself or his talents to make a life of any sort. Plus, he felt entitled.

I've read several books where the protagonist is not very likeable but yet you still find yourself intrigued by him and rooting for him in some way. The only time I felt any emotion toward Jack was at the end when the book was finished.

I'm glad to see others had a much better reader experience.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book leaves me feeling underwhelmed thought I'm not sure why. It's written well, the characters are well-developed, and the plot is interesting. Maybe I didn't like that it was told from two different time points, giving away the ending of what happened in the chronologically first timepoint.
The book broods remarkably well. I can absolutely believe the progression the main character takes to his actions at the end. The man is very much in his head and having no life of his own believes that others care more than they do about him.
Maybe I just didn't feel enraptured because the main character didn't have much of a life of his own. But I guess that's the point of the book.

[CKM · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is essentially a monologue by a man who is depressed/lonely/deranged. This sounds like it might be interesting, and it is for the first twenty pages, but then the imitative fallacy kicks in: it's no fun to listen to a crank drone on for 170 pages about the same few subjects: central park, his semi-invented friend Patrick, pseudo-intellectual nonsense, etc. Skim it at 10 pages per minute and you will miss nothing.

[Larry · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't care for this book at all. The symbolism was thrown in your face, the the blending of the two timelines of the story was forced, and the ending was non-existent. I'm so grateful it was short.