[REVIEW] The Understory, by Pamela Erens

200 pages, $15.95

Review by Thomas Michael Duncan

Standing in the remains of his fire-ravaged apartment, gripping an iron poker from the fireplace, staring down a man who will not and can not reciprocate his obsessive devotion, Jack Gorse says, “Tell me that you love me.”

So begins the thrilling climax of Pamela Erens’s debut novel, The Understory, reprinted earlier this year by Tin House Books. This rare edge-of-the-easy-chair moment stands out in the otherwise quiet, understated novel, heavily preoccupied with the internal conflicts of Jack Gorse’s devastated psyche. While The Understory is perhaps not as complete or compelling a novel as Erens’s sophomore effort, The Virgins, published by Tin House Books to national acclaim in 2013, this debut bears the watermark of a uniquely talented writer.

Chapters alternate between a past-tense recounting of Jack’s final days living illegally in a New York City apartment and a present-tense telling of his time living amongst monks in a Vermont Buddhist Monastery. The climax is the culmination of these two narratives, where the end of the former meets the beginning of the latter and the roots of Jack’s inner turmoil are laid bare.

Jack’s delicate mental state is clear right away. “Night is the worst time,” he says. “The men want to talk… I lie on my side on my mattress as the words pool around me, reciting to myself the botanical classifications for peach, cherry, apple.”

The story progresses slowly (surprisingly so for such a slim novel), following Jack through his daily routine—lunch at his usual diner served by his usual waitress, browsing the same books at the same second-hand bookstore—and chronicling his efforts to fight his impending eviction. When Patrick, a young architect employed by Jack’s landlord, comes to evaluate the building, Jack begins to cultivate a fantasy:

“In imagination I saw him again at dusk at the entranceway, and he told me he had forgotten to take certain measurements, certain photographs. He needed, he said, to see my apartment again. On the way up the stairs, leading him, I would stumble and his hand would fly out to brace my side… Anxiously he would ask if I was all right. Yes, I would assure him. I’m all right.”

Jack resists his feelings at first, but before long his entire, fragile existence depends upon his thin connection to Patrick. Erens beautifully plays out the push and pull between Jack’s instinct to conceal his desires and his need to express his emotions.

Erens’s sentences are lucid and measured, fitting flush together like pieces in a jigsaw puzzle. The narrative is not riveting in the traditional thriller sense but keeps the reader’s attention by fostering empathy for Jack in his perpetual struggle. All but the most cold-hearted readers will sympathize with Jack, root for him even when a positive outcome appears most unlikely. Alone and afraid, Jack’s story is very much a cry for love, one that he ultimately puts into simple words. “Tell me that you love me.”

***

Thomas Michael Duncan writes fiction, fact, reviews, and the occasional bit of nonsense. He lives with his wife in Lexington, South Carolina.