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Understory
by
Pamela Erens (Goodreads Author)
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 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...more
Paperback, 143 pages
Published
October 18th 2007
by Ironweed Press
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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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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 com...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 here it com...more
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 ...more
“I imagine that I am a conjoined creature; two souls wrapped into one, and after a ...more
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 bo...more
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.
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.
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
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 un...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 named un...more
Superbly written, Erens captures the mind and heart of someone who is alone, in love and longing for that love to be reciprocated. She writes her characters so well with language that really touches what their feeling that you almost feel guilty reading about them. It's like I was peering into a window, knowing I shouldn't have been. The only thing I didn't get/like was the ending. For me, it was too abrupt. Other than that, a fine read.
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
A truly engaging debut. It's an all-too quick read, but a thoroughly engrossing one.
Really enjoyed The Understory. The book alternates between a poor New York neighborhood and a monastery in Vermont and Erens creates a compelling story that enticed me to eagerly seek the connection that was created at the end.
The writing was phenomenal. Erens is sophisticated and complex, which is perfect for illustrating the inner life of someone who is also sophisticated (he's trained as a lawyer) and complex (he has elaborate rituals and a fascinating thought process), but appear...more
The writing was phenomenal. Erens is sophisticated and complex, which is perfect for illustrating the inner life of someone who is also sophisticated (he's trained as a lawyer) and complex (he has elaborate rituals and a fascinating thought process), but appear...more
Excellent and unusual.
so odd. i'm still processing it.
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.
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.
The Understory is now available in a Kindle edition! (Yes, I gave myself top rating, but only because if I left the star area blank, the site would award me a zero-star review.)
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.
A terrific novel and meditation on not just compulsion and isolation, but the role compulsion plays, good and bad, in the meditative life.
What a moving story. It's unusual to have this close an inspection of the sadness of a disordered mind. Very wonderfully written.
One of the most pleasurable reads I've had in a while. I was enchanted by its beautiful, pithy writing and complex characters.
A sensitive and intimate introduction to the mind of a troubled man. One of life's understories.
Very well written, compelling book.
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| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
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| Don't Limit Your Characters - an Interview | 1 | 11 | Mar 25, 2008 05:40pm |
Pamela Erens's novel, The Understory, published in 2007, was the winner of the Ironweed Press Fiction Prize and a finalist for both the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Pamela's short fiction has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes and has appeared in Chicago Review, Boston Review, The Literary Review, Bellingham Review, Upstreet, Skidrow Pen...more
More about Pamela Erens...
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