The Understory: A Novel Paperback – April 15, 2014

The author's writing style held my interest. She takes you directly into the life and feelings of the subject. Every detail coming alive as you experience the plight of a downtrodden man in love.

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!

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.

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.

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.

In the hands of a better writer, this might have been a good book.

I read this book when it first came out, and it stays with me in many ways. I remember Jack's exquisite loneliness, in some ways a secret from himself, an understory too. When the architect comes into his life and he feels...feelings, an external manifestation of his craving for attachment... after all this time we have been in his head, and then he lays out that dinner setting for two, in hopes that the other man will sit with him.So simple. So painful. I came to tears. Not over the rejection, just over the gesture, the rawness of it, what it took. In such a thin book, for all that to have been built, that I could cry over a man setting a table...Whoever compared this book to Hunger was on the money.