It can be nerve-wracking, picking up a new book by an author whose last book you loved. I read The Immortalists back in 2019 and loved it. I’ve recommended it to a lot of people over the years. So I was excited when I saw that Chloe Benjamin had a new book coming out this fall but nervous too because could it hold up to the high standard of The Immortalists.
I’m pleased to say that Under Story does. It has all the weirdness and delight and humanity of The Immortalists and it maybe even ramps all of that up. I want to compare it to books like Life After Life, Piranesi, and Katabasis but it’s also something entirely its own.
We meet Laurel Salter just as she is arriving in Antarctica in 2017. She is in her mid-thirties and has applied for a job as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, a chance to leave behind her whole life. No one at McMurdo knows that Laurel used to be a promising research scientist with a husband and son. But even at the end of the world, she can’t escape her past. When Laurel arrives at the base, there is a strange phenomenon that has been dubbed “the Arc”. As scientists arrive to figure out exactly what the Arc is and what it means, Laurel’s ex-husband, Eli, turns out to be one of them. At their unexpected reunion, Laurel begins to develop a theory about the Arc and quickly works to convince Eli to test her wild theory. One that just might give them back everything they want.
This is what the story is about and it’s also only a small portion of it. But to tell you more would, I think take something away from the experience of reading this book, of discovering worlds and stories along with Laurel. The book is over 400 pages and I still found myself racing through it, unsure at every page where Benjamin was going to take us next.
As in The Immortalists, it’s the characters and their relationships that really excel here. Laurel is such a sharply drawn character and we are so fully immersed in her life and the people around her. The book spends a fair amount of time at the beginning bringing us into the strange life of those who live and work in Antarctica but it never feels like we’re waiting for the action to start. We get some flashbacks to Laurel and Eli’s relationship at the beginning and I had felt myself prepared to hate Eli because of the pain that 2017 Laurel feels around him but then it felt so easy to fall in love with him alongside Laurel.
This is definitely a book where you have to suspend disbelief but Benjamin does put in the work of explaining a certain kind of rationalization and science, one that works within the context of this story. Laurel and Eli are scientists and they live lives surrounded by scientists. So while their discoveries might not make sense in our world, they do in theirs. I felt myself wholly immersed wherever Benjamin took me and willing to follow Laurel and Eli wherever they went. And they go down some pretty wild rabbit holes.
When I finished Under Story I felt like I’d been holding my breath underwater, like I’d woken up from an all too realistic dream. To me, that is the sign of a truly excellent story.
