About the Book
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. An attraction to another man, a near stranger, takes the narrator by surprise, destabilizes his precarious balance, and culminates in unexpected violence.
Critics / Reviews
"A mesmerizing tale... a universal human cry for love."
— ForeWord Magazine, September/October 2007
"An elegant, understated study of physical and psychic dislocations . . . artfully detailed and beautifully rendered."
— Chicago Tribune, December 22, 2007
"Jack Gorse, the bookish, obsessive protagonist of Pamela Erens' debut novel, is part of a long line of literary wanderers. Like Binx Bolling, from Walker Percy's The Moviegoer, Jack is an astute observer, a metaphysician of the ordinary, but a faltering amateur at living the life he so skillfully dissects.... The Understory is a worthy Northern counterpart to Percy's metaphysical exploration, and a reminder that originality and depth can be found in a fiction's language, not just in the breadth of the experience it represents."
— Small Spiral Notebook, October 8, 2007
"Erens is an exceptional writer."
— El Paso Times, October 28, 2007
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