Reviews for Under story : a novel
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
A grieving scientist takes a perilous chance to change the past and future. Benjamin’s epic new novel follows Laurel Salter, a 30-something scientist studying fungi, as she decides to upend her life by accepting a job at the McMurdo Station, a research base in Antarctica. Recently divorced from her physicist husband, Eli, and grieving an unimaginable loss, Laurel is drawn to the barren, isolated, and dark nature of the continent. Outside the station’s window, she notices “the Arc”—a mysterious dome of shimmering and color-changing light—in the distance. No one knows what the Arc is, how it was created, or what it means. As teams of scientists and physicists filter into the base to study the Arc, Laurel is paradoxically surprised and unsurprised to find Eli among them. The two are drawn together when the Arc reveals itself to be related to the Duoverse, an unproven scientific theory of Eli’s over which they had initially bonded. The Duoverse is the idea that the Big Bang created two universes: The universe, where time moves forward, and the antiuniverse, where time moves backward. Laurel sees the Arc as an opportunity to go back in time and space to prevent the tragedy that tore their lives apart. When Eli and Laurel make it to the other side, they must contend with a world that holds the promise of a new future—but ultimately does not belong to them. Benjamin’s imaginative rendering of the antiuniverse offers truly unique ways of thinking about time, nature, progress, duty, and aging. The novel, which ends rather abruptly after a 500-page lead-up, has a beautifully tender moment that brings the universes—and the two sides of the story—into perfect harmony. Blending literary fiction, science fiction, fantasy, and scientific research, Benjamin has created a genre-bending novel that is deeply concerned with the tenuous, mysterious, and enduring symbiotic relationship between humans and nature. Ambitious, poignant, and deeply human. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Book list
From Booklist, Copyright © American Library Association. Used with permission.
Laurel has to get away. A prominent mycologist, she’s more than willing to sign on as a kitchen worker to get to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. The primary source of her debilitating grief isn’t clear at first, but her marriage is over. It helps that Antarctica is radically different than Wisconsin, where she grew up working in her family’s apple orchard, enthralled by nature. But the Arc, an anomaly glowing on the icy horizon, attracts a group of physicists, including Laurel’s ex, Eli, who has developed a duouniverse theory. In her first novel since the beloved The Immortalists (2018), Benjamin intimately describes life in Antarctica, elucidates the wondrous communication between fungi and trees that fascinates Laurel and the mind-bending suppositions of quantum physics, all while gradually revealing the tragedy that induces Laurel and Eli to take a crazy-dangerous leap of faith. Veined with fascinating portraits of real-life scientists, this is a magnetizing love story of many dimensions, some gorgeously authentic, others forced in their painstaking speculation. Ultimately this capacious, suspenseful, and deeply moving novel of scientific and emotional quests offers provocative perspectives on obsession, parenting, time, forgiveness, and love.
Library Journal
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Laurel Salter, a biologist and fungi specialist in crisis, takes a chance on a life-changing opportunity: a job as a dishwasher at the McMurdo Station research base in Antarctica. Ostensibly safe from all reminders of her previous life, she explores and adapts to the rhythms of her new, extremely isolated life with her coworkers. Laurel observes and inquires about the Arc, a mysterious, glowing dome over the ice. Questions about the Arc start to draw scientists from all over the world; before long, Laurel's physicist ex-husband arrives too. Negotiating their history and shared pain leads them to Laurel's thoughts on the possibilities of the Arc, based on Eli's theory of a duoverse. They decide to test the Arc, using it to travel back in time to try to rescue their child before he's lost to them forever. Benjamin's immersive and atmospheric novel is a heartfelt and intellectually gripping missive to the planet, to loss, and to connection. VERDICT Fans of Benjamin's The Immortalists will be thrilled as she again delivers on all levels. Equally appropriate for fans of mycelium, odes to the magic of the Earth, and speculation on the myriad possibilities for humanity.—Julie Kane
Publishers Weekly
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Benjamin (The Immortalists) blends speculative fiction and romance in this sui generis story of an erstwhile couple who discover a parallel universe. Laurel Salter, a mycologist, divorces her physicist husband, Eli, leaves her position at U-W Madison, and takes a job as a dishwasher at the remote McMurdo Station in Antarctica, determined to get as far away as possible from her life. (Benjamin hints early on that Laurel suffered a devastating loss, the details of which are gradually revealed.) One day, researchers discover a coruscating light source, which they dub the Arc. News of the phenomenon draws physicists to the base, including Eli, much to Laurel’s chagrin. Because the Arc gives off inverted neutrinos, Eli thinks it proves his theory that there is a mirror universe, a Duoverse, where time runs backward. Laurel, stirred by Eli’s passion for his theory, persuades him to enter the Arc with her, and they find themselves in another realm where time indeed flows in reverse. Their goal is to stay for three years and undo the tragedy that tore them apart, then return to the known universe. Benjamin holds the reader’s attention with well-conceived depictions of the Duoverse, where people age in reverse from death to birth, but the heart of the story is in Laurel and Eli’s desperate attempt to mend their lives and recover their love. This captivates. Agent: Margaret Riley King, WME. (Sept.)
