What do you think?
Rate this book
Underneath
Over a five-year period, Martha Johnson murders her four children, one by one, in order to punish her husband when they argue, but Martha is no ordinary serial killer. She murders her children by using the bulk of her 250-pound body to suffocate them. Unlike other fictionalized true-crime novels, Underneath neither valorizes nor focuses on the specific acts of violence. Instead, it attempts to understand how feelings of powerlessness, the residue of trauma, and the need to find justice in a world that refuses to give a fat body justice finds its only respite through murder.
277 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 12, 2021
4 people are currently reading
354 people want to read
About the author
Lily Hoang
42 books121 followersLily Hoang's first book, PARABOLA, won the Chiasmus Press Un-Doing the Novel Contest. She is also the author of the forthcoming novels CHANGING (Fairy Tale Review Press, Dec. 2008) and THE EVOLUTIONARY REVOLUTION (Les Figues Press, 2009-10). She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of English & Women's Studies at Saint Mary's College in Indiana."
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
May 3, 2025
I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.
My Review: Disturbing story of disempowerment's most extreme and appalling cost. That it is based on a true story made me feel ill.
As one expects from stories published by Red Hen Press's Kate Gale, there is a weird and unsettling tension between the lovely language and the sheer awfulness unfolding inside those pretty phrases and unnerving images. Why should the murdered, especially these child-victims, be made to suffer punishment? Discuss amongst yourselves after reading this intensely book-clubbable book.
Incest...prostitution...child-murder...maternal child abuse...domestic violence...and told through a dead child's point of view. "Is this old man round the bend for good?" I hear y'all thinking, as you read my sentence above about the book being "intensely book-clubbable." No: I'm hoping to make it plain to you that this story is so viscerally real, so eye-wateringly honest about the actual experience of mothering for a not insignificant segment of women, that y'all bougie book clubbers could do with a corrective lens to all the saintly, rise-above-it-all, succeed succeed succeed "women's fiction" guff that gets Oprah'd and Reese'd. Please note that I am not attempting a knock on these book clubs, they are hugely popular for a reason and their choices are not all in one and only one vein...but they are very fond of a certain type of story (described above) and return to books telling it quite often. Don't fix what ain't broken.
I want people to look past the usual and see the raw edges where things have failed and fragmented in different ways. Where the fault lines that exist in much of the world go at a different angle. I include myself in this, as my periodic reviews of *shudder* poetry and *urp* YA stories demonstrate. Successful for me or not, these reads are in areas I'm hell-bent-for-leather not to ignore simply because I so very often find them...unpleasant...to read. As I've said many times, I do not want to die above the neck before I die below it. So I'm out there sayin' "yes" when people offer me the damn things instead of running away like I want to...challenging my prejudices is the only way I know to prevent them from becoming part of the bone structure.
With Underneath, Author Hoang very much did that kind of challenging. We're not innocents, readers all, we've read The Lovely Bones and/or seen its movie. Dead narrators in fiction go a long, long way farther back in time than that. I'm not sure this take on the story she's telling here, a sort of slo-mo In Cold Blood, is one I'd've recommended to her. (I sure as hell wouldn't've recommended using w-bombs.) But when you're fully in the flow of the story you can see why this choice was exactly right, and possibly the only one she could have made. There was no other structure which would've enabled the Bernice-to-Martha-to-Arlene transmission of woman-violence to come clear. It needed an eyewitness whose eyes weren't in the same place they used to be. Like, Earth.
The pace of storytelling...well...I don't exactly know what to tell you. This isn't a novella, but it's not a long book. It doesn't linger on any scene. It simply is Arlene...talking to you. The story seems, in my experience of reading it, to tell itself to you in some peculiar way. Maybe the narrator being a child, who specifically says she's a child but one whose, um, existence after death keeps her learning, is so disorienting that the story becomes more of presence than she is? I can't be sure...but to me, the story was its own narrator, and it called itself Arlene. (If that makes any sense to you, could you explain it to me?) It doesn't repeat itself. It doesn't leave stuff out (for long). It's got a pull like a river's current, not dramatic but inexorable and powerful, like it won't let you go once you're there.
So go with it.
The structural facts of a novel told in vignettes...in discrete story-slices, layered with the sadness that floats under the surface of the ever-expanding skin of mother eating, of child growing, of marriage to a man who loves only what he needs and not what he wants bloating as its death-gases seek escape...is irregular, like the crumb structure of the best bread is. Not for Author Hoang, writing about cake...endless cakes made and eaten, made and eaten, never ever shared...the dense, regular, sweet crumbs left on an unused party-plate. The coarse and unappealing crumbs, food for scavenging ants, of hollow-sounding adulterated loafs of dollar-store bread; these make Martha's and Arlene's lines as they slip and catch and form shapes no one wants to see, just sweep into a trash can or, at best, into a crumb-catcher for possible crushing and reuse after they're fully hardened and useless as food in themselves.
There is a crisis in this world. It's a crisis of unlove. There are so many, many people in the world who are unloved. Who can't love or return love or even conceptualize it. They're incapable of it; they need it the more desperately because of that. But they don't and can't and won't get love. They are love-less. Bernice? Martha? Even, in the end, Arlene...love-less. Love, you see, isn't a word or a fancy chocolate bar, or a birthday card. It's action, investment of time and emotion. And the tragedy, in the ancient sense as well as the modern, of this story is that It. Is. True.
Beautiful sentences telling a dreadful, tragic tale of love, in its absence and its perverse, incomprehensible to normies, twisted shapes. Read this and be very, very glad you are none of these people.
Read this and shudder to your bones: You are all of these people. Happy Spooktober.
***
Oh, was this a treat...Lily Hoang liked my review! She even retweeted it! It does so matter to me that authors, if they choose to acknowledge reviews, appreciate that I *got* their book-babys.
My Review: Disturbing story of disempowerment's most extreme and appalling cost. That it is based on a true story made me feel ill.
...I'm pretty sure this isn't purgatory, either. It's more just like, extension. Continuation. We the murdered continue on, right underneath the living, but we aren't alive anymore. We're just here: bodies, but not bodies, too. So far as I can tell, the living can't see or hear or feel or smell us, but sometimes, if I get close enough to Martha, I swear she can taste me. ... Because we were murdered, this is our punishment.
As one expects from stories published by Red Hen Press's Kate Gale, there is a weird and unsettling tension between the lovely language and the sheer awfulness unfolding inside those pretty phrases and unnerving images. Why should the murdered, especially these child-victims, be made to suffer punishment? Discuss amongst yourselves after reading this intensely book-clubbable book.
Incest...prostitution...child-murder...maternal child abuse...domestic violence...and told through a dead child's point of view. "Is this old man round the bend for good?" I hear y'all thinking, as you read my sentence above about the book being "intensely book-clubbable." No: I'm hoping to make it plain to you that this story is so viscerally real, so eye-wateringly honest about the actual experience of mothering for a not insignificant segment of women, that y'all bougie book clubbers could do with a corrective lens to all the saintly, rise-above-it-all, succeed succeed succeed "women's fiction" guff that gets Oprah'd and Reese'd. Please note that I am not attempting a knock on these book clubs, they are hugely popular for a reason and their choices are not all in one and only one vein...but they are very fond of a certain type of story (described above) and return to books telling it quite often. Don't fix what ain't broken.
I want people to look past the usual and see the raw edges where things have failed and fragmented in different ways. Where the fault lines that exist in much of the world go at a different angle. I include myself in this, as my periodic reviews of *shudder* poetry and *urp* YA stories demonstrate. Successful for me or not, these reads are in areas I'm hell-bent-for-leather not to ignore simply because I so very often find them...unpleasant...to read. As I've said many times, I do not want to die above the neck before I die below it. So I'm out there sayin' "yes" when people offer me the damn things instead of running away like I want to...challenging my prejudices is the only way I know to prevent them from becoming part of the bone structure.
With Underneath, Author Hoang very much did that kind of challenging. We're not innocents, readers all, we've read The Lovely Bones and/or seen its movie. Dead narrators in fiction go a long, long way farther back in time than that. I'm not sure this take on the story she's telling here, a sort of slo-mo In Cold Blood, is one I'd've recommended to her. (I sure as hell wouldn't've recommended using w-bombs.) But when you're fully in the flow of the story you can see why this choice was exactly right, and possibly the only one she could have made. There was no other structure which would've enabled the Bernice-to-Martha-to-Arlene transmission of woman-violence to come clear. It needed an eyewitness whose eyes weren't in the same place they used to be. Like, Earth.
The pace of storytelling...well...I don't exactly know what to tell you. This isn't a novella, but it's not a long book. It doesn't linger on any scene. It simply is Arlene...talking to you. The story seems, in my experience of reading it, to tell itself to you in some peculiar way. Maybe the narrator being a child, who specifically says she's a child but one whose, um, existence after death keeps her learning, is so disorienting that the story becomes more of presence than she is? I can't be sure...but to me, the story was its own narrator, and it called itself Arlene. (If that makes any sense to you, could you explain it to me?) It doesn't repeat itself. It doesn't leave stuff out (for long). It's got a pull like a river's current, not dramatic but inexorable and powerful, like it won't let you go once you're there.
So go with it.
The structural facts of a novel told in vignettes...in discrete story-slices, layered with the sadness that floats under the surface of the ever-expanding skin of mother eating, of child growing, of marriage to a man who loves only what he needs and not what he wants bloating as its death-gases seek escape...is irregular, like the crumb structure of the best bread is. Not for Author Hoang, writing about cake...endless cakes made and eaten, made and eaten, never ever shared...the dense, regular, sweet crumbs left on an unused party-plate. The coarse and unappealing crumbs, food for scavenging ants, of hollow-sounding adulterated loafs of dollar-store bread; these make Martha's and Arlene's lines as they slip and catch and form shapes no one wants to see, just sweep into a trash can or, at best, into a crumb-catcher for possible crushing and reuse after they're fully hardened and useless as food in themselves.
There is a crisis in this world. It's a crisis of unlove. There are so many, many people in the world who are unloved. Who can't love or return love or even conceptualize it. They're incapable of it; they need it the more desperately because of that. But they don't and can't and won't get love. They are love-less. Bernice? Martha? Even, in the end, Arlene...love-less. Love, you see, isn't a word or a fancy chocolate bar, or a birthday card. It's action, investment of time and emotion. And the tragedy, in the ancient sense as well as the modern, of this story is that It. Is. True.
Beautiful sentences telling a dreadful, tragic tale of love, in its absence and its perverse, incomprehensible to normies, twisted shapes. Read this and be very, very glad you are none of these people.
Read this and shudder to your bones: You are all of these people. Happy Spooktober.
***
Oh, was this a treat...Lily Hoang liked my review! She even retweeted it! It does so matter to me that authors, if they choose to acknowledge reviews, appreciate that I *got* their book-babys.
Read
May 5, 2024No rating/endorsement
first things first:
I read this digitally on hoopla for free.
Written by Lily Hoang/celebrating Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Major content warnings for the following:
Child abuse in all its forms, explicit fat shaming and fat phobia, disordered eating, psychological trauma, murder of multiple children by their own mother, graphic language and psychological warfare
Maybe one of the most extreme books I've ever read (*endured)
This book is exactly what it promises to deliver in the synopsis, there are no real surprises other than my willingness to read the whole thing, I thought I would quit. There is something quite fascinating in the work Lily Hoang did here in, Underneath, in the way she buried under the initial revulsion and horror to uncover the making of a monster. The systematic psychological warfare inflicted on one person over their whole life and how that kind of damage can have lasting consequences for everyone to come into their sphere of influence afterward.
Like getting sucked into someone's black hole of abuse and anger and trauma.
Extremely disturbing and upsetting. I'll have to think long and hard about recommending it in any capacity. Enter this one at your own risk.
first things first:
I read this digitally on hoopla for free.
Written by Lily Hoang/celebrating Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month
Major content warnings for the following:
Child abuse in all its forms, explicit fat shaming and fat phobia, disordered eating, psychological trauma, murder of multiple children by their own mother, graphic language and psychological warfare
Maybe one of the most extreme books I've ever read (*endured)
This book is exactly what it promises to deliver in the synopsis, there are no real surprises other than my willingness to read the whole thing, I thought I would quit. There is something quite fascinating in the work Lily Hoang did here in, Underneath, in the way she buried under the initial revulsion and horror to uncover the making of a monster. The systematic psychological warfare inflicted on one person over their whole life and how that kind of damage can have lasting consequences for everyone to come into their sphere of influence afterward.
Like getting sucked into someone's black hole of abuse and anger and trauma.
Extremely disturbing and upsetting. I'll have to think long and hard about recommending it in any capacity. Enter this one at your own risk.
December 28, 2021
Martha has had a very difficult life in which EVERYONE hates her and is awful to her, so she murders her children by suffocating them under her large body and she also makes a lot of cakes. Quick read filled with misery and trauma. I liked how the book made me feel sorry for and enraged/disgusted by Martha - nice experiment in the limits of empathy. I also was interested in how I reacted to the character of Kenny, who was entirely complicit in everything but I really did not even notice that because I was so busy being horrified by Martha.
File under: quick reads, shocking
Learned about: bullying, abuse, intergenerational trauma
File under: quick reads, shocking
Learned about: bullying, abuse, intergenerational trauma
October 13, 2021
Rarely do I read such elegant, smart sentences put toward such unyielding, unrelenting miserabilism.
September 16, 2024
okay I can’t widely recommend this story, this is heavy and dark but if you can handle the content of this story, truly what a wonderful craft. this book isn’t the truest of 5 stars but after discussing it for over an hour I’m very impressed with what this story accomplished. I laughed, I cried, it did so much. this is based on a true story but is also fictionalized, the real story happened in the 70s-80s and is interesting and not well known. I think the actually writing style was phenomenal even if it had me unsure what was the character speaking vs the author but I want to give the benefit of the doubt there.
tw: (this won’t be all cause I’m not very good at giving content warnings but these are what stuck out to me) child murder, emotionally and physically abusive relationships with family and partners, big tw for eating disorders, fat phobia and racism. uhh I’m sure there’s even more but that’s what stuck out to me. like I’ve said it’s a heavy read, yes, but the way it was actually written and told made the story much easier to digest even when at times hard to stomach. I think a lot of discussion can come from this story but it was told in a unique way that really worked for me so I hope this book can find its audience.
if you’re interested, we had a long book club discussion about this that you can check out, I’d say the first hour and a half were probably on topic but friends also catch up and we moved on to other things by the end 🤣 https://www.youtube.com/live/lz3yS9Bt...
tw: (this won’t be all cause I’m not very good at giving content warnings but these are what stuck out to me) child murder, emotionally and physically abusive relationships with family and partners, big tw for eating disorders, fat phobia and racism. uhh I’m sure there’s even more but that’s what stuck out to me. like I’ve said it’s a heavy read, yes, but the way it was actually written and told made the story much easier to digest even when at times hard to stomach. I think a lot of discussion can come from this story but it was told in a unique way that really worked for me so I hope this book can find its audience.
if you’re interested, we had a long book club discussion about this that you can check out, I’d say the first hour and a half were probably on topic but friends also catch up and we moved on to other things by the end 🤣 https://www.youtube.com/live/lz3yS9Bt...
September 25, 2021
Arlene the narrator is an 11-yr old dead girl in purgatory or somewhere, forced to watch her murderer every day who happens to be her mother. It's not clear why Arlene the victim is made to suffer in this afterlife, except that's just the way this book is, that the victims are the ones that are punished, insufferably. Child abuse ran riot in Arlene's family, back for generations; her mother Martha was abused by her own mother Bernice and by everybody in her elementary school, her only solace came from eating cake. It's unclear why Bernice and her husband are so abusive towards their daughter Martha. There are a lot of tangents here about fairness and darkness, the setting is New Mexico. There is a lot of on and on about beauty and ugliness, thinness and obesity, prostitution and incest, hatred and revenge, but I see nothing to be gained by reading any of this other than abject disgust and horror. A huge section of this book simply reads like a numbered litany of ruminant ranting, there's a note promising what looks like an editor to provide something within a few days to replace letters to Martha that were cut, I honestly can't read Lily Hoang ever again.
April 28, 2022
"The house groans and then it exhales with a pout. The paint on the adobe falls off in clumps."
April 15, 2022
This story is narrated from the point of view of a murdered 11-year-old Arlene. It is the story of Martha Johnson who suffocates her four children by rolling over them with the bulk of her 250-pound body. She murders a child for revenge every time her husband leaves her. The author does a great job explaining what led Martha to kill her children, and delves into her childhood years when she was bullied by her classmates and abused by her mother.
For me, this book was a page-turner. For others who have lost children, may be very emotional. A great read with lots of discussion themes: Obsession; bullying in schoolchildren; abusive mother/daughter relationships; obesity; body image; child abuse; the monstrous side of human nature; murder; trauma; powerlessness; revenge; justice; and imprisonment.
For me, this book was a page-turner. For others who have lost children, may be very emotional. A great read with lots of discussion themes: Obsession; bullying in schoolchildren; abusive mother/daughter relationships; obesity; body image; child abuse; the monstrous side of human nature; murder; trauma; powerlessness; revenge; justice; and imprisonment.
January 7, 2022
This might be the most depressing book I’ve ever read. There wasn’t one moment in reading it that I did not feel terrible.
May 11, 2025
In a class entirely its own.
April 19, 2025
I went into Underneath with curiosity, especially after learning that it took Lily Hoang eight years to write. Unfortunately, I found the result disappointing, upsetting, and, at times, offensive.
The book was difficult to follow, both structurally and emotionally. The prose felt disjointed, the narrative hard to engage with, and the characters frustratingly underdeveloped. As someone who shares the same weight as the main character, Martha, I was especially disturbed by how fatness was portrayed. The language used to describe her body and habits felt unnecessarily cruel, stereotypical, and rooted in fatphobia. I do not identify with a character whose entire identity is reduced to being “disgusting” simply for existing in a larger body, nor do I relate to the exaggerated, dehumanizing assumptions about diet and physical ability that the book perpetuates.
The depiction of regional culture also raised concerns. Though the story is set in New Mexico, the characters read like caricatures of the Deep South, with a “Southern Gothic cosplay” that felt more like Georgia (where the real-life crimes occurred) than the Southwest. As a Southerner, I found the portrayal grating and inauthentic.
Even more troubling was the way the author handled the real-life murders the book draws from. Creative liberties are expected in fiction, but in this case, they felt excessive and disrespectful to the real people involved. Rather than illuminating the complexity of the crimes, the novel leaned heavily into a sensationalized and problematic portrayal of the perpetrator.
The extensive list toward the end, 300+ reasons why Martha turned out the way she did, appeared to be a last-ditch effort to humanize her. But it came too late and felt more like a justification of trauma than an exploration of accountability or empathy. Martha is portrayed not as a murderer first, but as someone inherently repulsive due to her appearance, something that is deeply unsettling and offensive.
Overall, Underneath reads like a project born of internalized body dysmorphia and unresolved personal issues. Instead of challenging fatphobic narratives, it reinforces them. Rather than offering insight into trauma or crime, it distorts them. I walked away from this book not with empathy, but with frustration and discomfort.
I cannot recommend it.
The book was difficult to follow, both structurally and emotionally. The prose felt disjointed, the narrative hard to engage with, and the characters frustratingly underdeveloped. As someone who shares the same weight as the main character, Martha, I was especially disturbed by how fatness was portrayed. The language used to describe her body and habits felt unnecessarily cruel, stereotypical, and rooted in fatphobia. I do not identify with a character whose entire identity is reduced to being “disgusting” simply for existing in a larger body, nor do I relate to the exaggerated, dehumanizing assumptions about diet and physical ability that the book perpetuates.
The depiction of regional culture also raised concerns. Though the story is set in New Mexico, the characters read like caricatures of the Deep South, with a “Southern Gothic cosplay” that felt more like Georgia (where the real-life crimes occurred) than the Southwest. As a Southerner, I found the portrayal grating and inauthentic.
Even more troubling was the way the author handled the real-life murders the book draws from. Creative liberties are expected in fiction, but in this case, they felt excessive and disrespectful to the real people involved. Rather than illuminating the complexity of the crimes, the novel leaned heavily into a sensationalized and problematic portrayal of the perpetrator.
The extensive list toward the end, 300+ reasons why Martha turned out the way she did, appeared to be a last-ditch effort to humanize her. But it came too late and felt more like a justification of trauma than an exploration of accountability or empathy. Martha is portrayed not as a murderer first, but as someone inherently repulsive due to her appearance, something that is deeply unsettling and offensive.
Overall, Underneath reads like a project born of internalized body dysmorphia and unresolved personal issues. Instead of challenging fatphobic narratives, it reinforces them. Rather than offering insight into trauma or crime, it distorts them. I walked away from this book not with empathy, but with frustration and discomfort.
I cannot recommend it.
Read
May 9, 2024A despondent and grueling read that, despite the horror it details, remains eerily compelling.
Exploring the avenues in which Martha was ostracized and abused until wielding that for her own was both fascinating and disturbing. Throughout, I was able to, at points, feel incredibly sad for her but I don't think I ever once pitied and excused any of her actions. It truly surprised me that even when faced with so much condensed misery in a story, knowing the conclusion, and the almost cyclical structure of the book, I never once found myself throwing in the towel.
Do I think this story could've been a lot more condensed with the same impact? Yes. While I understood the need for Arlene's POV to portray this unrelenting cycle she experienced, and for us as a reader to feel, ourselves, the incessant abuse that comes from living in a larger body by repeated and often list-like voices and vignettes of Martha's world, it teetered on being at quite the detriment to the book, for me. Yes, it still remained compelling, but that doesn't mean I wasn't greatly tempted to skim at points. Everything about Martha, her life, her actions, started to feel almost a caricature, even if these moments were meant to provide key insight. It was never a case of "Oh, I see, so that's how..." it was, "Well, of course."
Not a book for the faint of heart, and if you're looking for a piece which explores this dark a subject matter with at the very least some glimmers of hope, it is also not for you.
Underneath is truly relentless and brutal - but has incredibly poignant moments, and I think if you can stomach the slew of content warnings that come with this book, it's worth the read for those moments.
Exploring the avenues in which Martha was ostracized and abused until wielding that for her own was both fascinating and disturbing. Throughout, I was able to, at points, feel incredibly sad for her but I don't think I ever once pitied and excused any of her actions. It truly surprised me that even when faced with so much condensed misery in a story, knowing the conclusion, and the almost cyclical structure of the book, I never once found myself throwing in the towel.
Do I think this story could've been a lot more condensed with the same impact? Yes. While I understood the need for Arlene's POV to portray this unrelenting cycle she experienced, and for us as a reader to feel, ourselves, the incessant abuse that comes from living in a larger body by repeated and often list-like voices and vignettes of Martha's world, it teetered on being at quite the detriment to the book, for me. Yes, it still remained compelling, but that doesn't mean I wasn't greatly tempted to skim at points. Everything about Martha, her life, her actions, started to feel almost a caricature, even if these moments were meant to provide key insight. It was never a case of "Oh, I see, so that's how..." it was, "Well, of course."
Not a book for the faint of heart, and if you're looking for a piece which explores this dark a subject matter with at the very least some glimmers of hope, it is also not for you.
Underneath is truly relentless and brutal - but has incredibly poignant moments, and I think if you can stomach the slew of content warnings that come with this book, it's worth the read for those moments.
July 24, 2024
This was ROUGH. It was heart breaking what these children had to live through. This book did a good job of showing how generational trauma is passed down and how inescapable it can feel to a child living through it.
January 2, 2026
An incredibly well-written and heartbreaking novel that I don't think I could recommend to anyone. Very dark stuff that gets under your skin.
July 13, 2023
This one was tough to read but also tough to put down. Generally felt this sense of a brutally miserable poetic-like aura that bashed me in the head while simultaneously making me think about the thin line between love and hate/self hate that’s projected onto others, as well as just alienated families in general.
The story rendering and prose style of this unique novel was unlike anything I’ve read before. I’m not even sure how much I ‘enjoyed’ it. I just know I had to put it down at times just from the sheer human craziness of the main protagonist/narrator. Even as I couldn’t wait to take a few breaths and pick it up again.
Totally unique.
The story rendering and prose style of this unique novel was unlike anything I’ve read before. I’m not even sure how much I ‘enjoyed’ it. I just know I had to put it down at times just from the sheer human craziness of the main protagonist/narrator. Even as I couldn’t wait to take a few breaths and pick it up again.
Totally unique.
Read
March 9, 2026Ugly story, beautiful writing
June 5, 2022
I'm not sure what I truly think about this one yet. There are horrific moments that sneak up on you, even though you are told from the beginning that they are coming. It is depressing. It is heartbreaking. Some of the sentences are exquisitely beautiful in their sadness. There is the whole nature vs nurture element in the making of a monster, who you almost feel empathy towards even though she is truly awful. The narrator is an 11 year old girl who has been murdered by her mother and must watch her for an hour per day. The story flips between the mother's abusive childhood to the narrators childhood, the current household dynamics, and a variety of odd little snippets along the way, leading up to the murder and what happens after. I think I would have found this story fascinating had it been linear. Its very disjointed and difficult to follow at times.
March 29, 2022
Abandon hope, all ye who enter here, for there is no hope to be found in these pages, only sorrow.
God, did this one hurt. This book details the story of a woman who smothers all of her children, and what kind of life she lead to bring her to that sort of violence, and it was absolutely unrelenting in showing the constant cruelty experience by both this 'monster' mother and her eldest daughter. It is beautifully written, and absolutely engrossing - horrifying, but in the way that you cannot look away. I would recommend, but only if you are in a pretty good headspace, since a reader can truly get bogged down by how bleak this is.
God, did this one hurt. This book details the story of a woman who smothers all of her children, and what kind of life she lead to bring her to that sort of violence, and it was absolutely unrelenting in showing the constant cruelty experience by both this 'monster' mother and her eldest daughter. It is beautifully written, and absolutely engrossing - horrifying, but in the way that you cannot look away. I would recommend, but only if you are in a pretty good headspace, since a reader can truly get bogged down by how bleak this is.
October 29, 2022
where was the editor? that’s all.
January 13, 2026
Discovering that Lily Hoang’s Underneath was true crime fictionalized, I could not wait to get to this book on my TBR list. I had never heard of the case of Martha Ann Johnson, the serial murdering mom who smothered her kids underneath her own heft, but I was horrifically fascinated that someone could even conceive to do such a thing.
Unfortunately, instead of showing many sides to her characters, particularly Martha, and painting them with a little nuance as they must possess in real-life, Hoang zeroes in on one aspect of their lives and one aspect only - trauma. This book most certainly reads like trauma porn with one horrific event happening after another - whether it be verbal, emotional, or physical abuse. It is a string of terrors … because only someone who has been excessively berated and made to feel like dirt their entire lives is capable of turning on their own children, right? WRONG.
Underneath was quite tedious to read because there is not much to it beyond name-calling, fat-shaming, and just giving everyone in it the worst treatment. While many of the passages are quite beautifully written and are lyrical (yet sad), the content of this novel makes reading it a chore. There are only so many times you can read about someone being called “dumb as a plate,” or listen to yet another person telling them how ugly they are. Does this a murderer make? Maybe. But also perhaps not.
The lack of nuance and showing a more human side of Martha is where Hoang gets it wrong. To take such liberties with an actual person and their family’s lives is most definitely a … choice. I would have liked to have seen an insert at the end of the book where Hoang clears the air and explains the creative license she took, while giving us some factual info about the REAL Martha, as there is not much of a narrative about her out there. As it stands, I have no idea what is true, what is sensationalized, and what is completely made up.
Unfortunately, instead of showing many sides to her characters, particularly Martha, and painting them with a little nuance as they must possess in real-life, Hoang zeroes in on one aspect of their lives and one aspect only - trauma. This book most certainly reads like trauma porn with one horrific event happening after another - whether it be verbal, emotional, or physical abuse. It is a string of terrors … because only someone who has been excessively berated and made to feel like dirt their entire lives is capable of turning on their own children, right? WRONG.
Underneath was quite tedious to read because there is not much to it beyond name-calling, fat-shaming, and just giving everyone in it the worst treatment. While many of the passages are quite beautifully written and are lyrical (yet sad), the content of this novel makes reading it a chore. There are only so many times you can read about someone being called “dumb as a plate,” or listen to yet another person telling them how ugly they are. Does this a murderer make? Maybe. But also perhaps not.
The lack of nuance and showing a more human side of Martha is where Hoang gets it wrong. To take such liberties with an actual person and their family’s lives is most definitely a … choice. I would have liked to have seen an insert at the end of the book where Hoang clears the air and explains the creative license she took, while giving us some factual info about the REAL Martha, as there is not much of a narrative about her out there. As it stands, I have no idea what is true, what is sensationalized, and what is completely made up.
January 21, 2023
This was a horrific read.
It took me months to finish, purely because the author did such a good job at conveying the worst parts of humanity. Truly not a read for the feint of heart, I've never encountered a novel as painful as this one. When I purchased this book, I figured I'd be in for a twisted psychological thriller. I was so completely wrong.
Underneath delves into the psyche of a victim of abuse, rehashing the nitty gritty details in all their evil glory. Particularly, in the list. Hoang includes a 300 something numbered list of reasons why Martha became the way she did. That list almost made me stop reading, just to get a reprieve from the endless torture and abuse endured by the main character.
Overall, extremely successfully written, but damn. A black hole of trauma.
It took me months to finish, purely because the author did such a good job at conveying the worst parts of humanity. Truly not a read for the feint of heart, I've never encountered a novel as painful as this one. When I purchased this book, I figured I'd be in for a twisted psychological thriller. I was so completely wrong.
Underneath delves into the psyche of a victim of abuse, rehashing the nitty gritty details in all their evil glory. Particularly, in the list. Hoang includes a 300 something numbered list of reasons why Martha became the way she did. That list almost made me stop reading, just to get a reprieve from the endless torture and abuse endured by the main character.
Overall, extremely successfully written, but damn. A black hole of trauma.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 7, 2024
I'm a big fan of Lily Hoang's essay collection A Bestiary, and this novel has the same pristine, lyrical prose and innovative structural experimentation. Despite its disturbing subject matter, I found it hard to put down, especially toward the end. The narrative builds a stunning level of momentum. I do wonder about the decision to have the murdered daughter/narrator become paralyzed from a fall and therefore fully incapacitated leading up to her death. Unless this is based on facts from the real crime itself, it seemed like an extra layer of misery that very nearly tipped the victim's experiences into the realm of the absurd. Besides that, the novel is bold and relentless in its exploration of monstrous cruelty, both its depths and its source.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
June 24, 2024
Look, it's not like I expected a book about an abused child who grows up into an obese woman who murders all of her children by suffocation told from the narrative viewpoint of the last suffocated child to be uplifting , but this book felt very heavy-handed and repetitive in making/proving its point. Do we need a 50-page chapter with 365 bullet points outlining insults the woman faced as a child? Was the point that reading the book should be as painful as what the woman and her children endured? The choruses and the frenetic line breaks were interested, but in the end, this read like Palahniuk without the wit. Or like a written transcript of a snuff film.
December 31, 2021
CW: child death, suffocation, body shaming
Martha Johnson kills her four children by suffocation… with her own body. The core idea in Underneath is society’s inclination to ostracize “fat” women and to police what they are “allowed” to do, who they may befriend, who they may love. From a young age, Martha is severely mistreated at school and at home, ultimately leading to a life dictated by a lust for revenge and punishment, as she bakes and eats cake after cake. Her eldest daughter, Arlene, narrates Underneath from some kind of other side or purgatory after her mother kills her, the final death before Martha goes to prison.
This book kept my interest, but I do think it could have been 100 pages shorter. Some of the style choices, like repetition and use of forms like numerical lists, seemed overdone, and were more distracting than they were support for the narrative. In many ways, Underneath felt more like a retelling of Martha’s life, beginning at conception, than commentary on some of the central issues.
Martha Johnson kills her four children by suffocation… with her own body. The core idea in Underneath is society’s inclination to ostracize “fat” women and to police what they are “allowed” to do, who they may befriend, who they may love. From a young age, Martha is severely mistreated at school and at home, ultimately leading to a life dictated by a lust for revenge and punishment, as she bakes and eats cake after cake. Her eldest daughter, Arlene, narrates Underneath from some kind of other side or purgatory after her mother kills her, the final death before Martha goes to prison.
This book kept my interest, but I do think it could have been 100 pages shorter. Some of the style choices, like repetition and use of forms like numerical lists, seemed overdone, and were more distracting than they were support for the narrative. In many ways, Underneath felt more like a retelling of Martha’s life, beginning at conception, than commentary on some of the central issues.
November 24, 2024
This book was bleak, depressing, and very unsettling. Every page of this story broke my heart. I hurt for Martha and then I hated her. Much like the narrator (her daughter). Nothing was fair in this story. There wasn’t an ounce of happiness. It was beautifully written but I felt there could have been more. There were so many gaps. It was written in fragments and prose. This story will always stick with me as a beautiful tragedy.
May 13, 2022
Wow. I vacillated between liking and not liking this book, just because I had a hard time with the cruel mother. However, as you read the book, a lot is revealed that makes you understand what makes this character the way she is. Based on a true story, and written from the point of view of the older (11 years) child, the story is compelling, but could be hard for some people. Excellent book.
July 13, 2024
Martha is fat.
You feel horribly for Martha in the “list of reasons” but then it immediately goes to her abusing Arlene and … it just shows the cycle
A bit confusing to follow with the first person pov bc sometimes it was referencing Martha as a kid, idk maybe I’m slow,
But it was overall very different from the recent books I’ve read so it wa refreshing but still very …… interesting
You feel horribly for Martha in the “list of reasons” but then it immediately goes to her abusing Arlene and … it just shows the cycle
A bit confusing to follow with the first person pov bc sometimes it was referencing Martha as a kid, idk maybe I’m slow,
But it was overall very different from the recent books I’ve read so it wa refreshing but still very …… interesting
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 10, 2025
Ugghhhh!! Beautiful cover and cool concept but ultimately…. Trauma porn. I love lit fic but this was just repetitive and the phrase “dumb as a plate” drove me insane. Just an annoying read all around. I can’t imagine a large audience for this book unless you come from a like of generationally abusive mother figures with no prospective happiness down the family line
September 8, 2022
I literally could not get through this book, and that makes me quite sad bc I can tell that the author is a magnificent writer and the themes they bring up need attention. But about halfway through I found it needlessly repetitive and incredibly sad. Just had to put it down.
January 10, 2023
Weird and scary, and delivered by a voice that is so chilling in her delivery of her own realities. I found it grotesque and hard, but also incredibly compelling. I didn't fly through it but was happy to read through to the end.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews