book data
42 ratings,
4.48
average rating, 18 reviews
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published
October 18th 2007
by Ironweed Pr Inc
binding
Paperback, 143 pages
url
isbn
1931336040
(isbn13: 9781931336048)
description
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Set in New York City and in a Buddhist monast...more
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 85)
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avg 4.48
editions: all | this edition
editions: all | this edition
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 lonel...more
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 lonel...more
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
Fans of Camus's The Stranger
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 her...more
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 her...more
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Read in May, 2008
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 af...more
“I imagine that I am a conjoined creature; two souls wrapped into one, and af...more
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2 comments
Read in March, 2008
Wow -- one of the best books I've read in a long time.
This book could have gone wrong in so many different ways, but Erens makes all the right choices.
The story is told from the point of view of Jack Gorse, a shy, OCD-ish individual who lives a pared down existence devoted to reading the classics and going on walks on his regular route through Manhattan. Reality intrudes as his new landlord threatens to evict him from his beloved apartment and he meets a young man whose friend...more
This book could have gone wrong in so many different ways, but Erens makes all the right choices.
The story is told from the point of view of Jack Gorse, a shy, OCD-ish individual who lives a pared down existence devoted to reading the classics and going on walks on his regular route through Manhattan. Reality intrudes as his new landlord threatens to evict him from his beloved apartment and he meets a young man whose friend...more
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Reading this slowly. It's so beautifully written.
Just finished. I recommend this book to anyone. Exquisite writing and compelling story. I will eagerly read more by this author.
Just finished. I recommend this book to anyone. Exquisite writing and compelling story. I will eagerly read more by this author.
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1 comment
Read in July, 2008
recommended to Pia by:
Zoetrope website
Damn, she can write. I'm going slowly because there aren't many pages but the sentences are gorgeous and laden and they're sinking in. I'll be back when I'm done.
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Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
fans of Dave King's The Ha-Ha
This was just a marvellous novel, a real find. I opened the bookstore package while standing by the tea kettle, flicked to the first page, and half an hour later had to force myself to put the darn book down and get back to work. (Tea was cold.)
Great storytelling, a compelling voice, and the understory keeps unfolding on many levels. Beautiful writing. Other readers have described the story very well already. But something in the tone and quality of characterization, and the way it i...more
Great storytelling, a compelling voice, and the understory keeps unfolding on many levels. Beautiful writing. Other readers have described the story very well already. But something in the tone and quality of characterization, and the way it i...more
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Read in November, 2007
recommends it for:
intelligent readers
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 name...more
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 name...more
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Read in November, 2007
A great debut novel from Pamela Erens (and winner of the Ironwood Press Fiction Prize). This is one of those books you just want to stay home from work to finish reading. The lead character is Jack Gorse, an unemployed loner whose daily routines (that border on OCD) give him a purpose in life. (In this sense the writing reminds me of the best of Magnus Mills, the way you as the reader slip into the character's mind and daily doings.) The routines, however, are upset when Jack is evicted from his...more
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A truly engaging debut. It's an all-too quick read, but a thoroughly engrossing one.
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Read in July, 2007
I was fortunate enough to see an ARC of this wonderful debut by Pamela Erens (my review is forthcoming in Rain Taxi). It follows converging stories about a troubled young man in New York City that uses the Central Park ecosystem as a beautiful metaphor for human interdependence.
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Read in February, 2008
recommends it for:
everyone
I loved this book. Erens has drawn a complex, interesting character in the narrator and her prose is elegant in the way that Coetzee's is. Just like the title suggests, there's a surprising and rich darkness underneath the top layer.
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Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
adults who do not demand light reading or a happy ending.
Wow. A very tightly-written book about an outsider that reminds me of A Dangerous Woman, by Mary McGarry Morris. Amazing, sympathetic but realistic writing.
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A terrific novel and meditation on not just compulsion and isolation, but the role compulsion plays, good and bad, in the meditative life.
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Read in July, 2008
What a moving story. It's unusual to have this close an inspection of the sadness of a disordered mind. Very wonderfully written.
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Read in January, 2008
One of the most pleasurable reads I've had in a while. I was enchanted by its beautiful, pithy writing and complex characters.
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