Under Story

Sometimes I pick up a book not knowing anything about the author or their other books and dive in headfirst, hoping the buildup is worth it. Under Story by Chloe Benjamin was hyped up online (at least in my feed) and I will admit the blurb sounded amazing.

At the edge of the world, biologist Laurel Salter is hiding from everything she’s ever known. For ten hours a day, six days per week, she works as a dishwasher at McMurdo Station, an isolated research base in Antarctica. She tells no one that before she arrived, she was a renowned young scientist with a promising career and a family.

But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can’t escape her past. When a strange light appears across the ice—and draws a group of physicists to McMurdo—her former husband, Eli, won’t be far behind. Laurel is captivated by the Arc: its surreal glow; the way it seems almost alive. And though Eli is reluctant to test her wildest theory, Laurel is convinced that the Arc leads down a rabbit hole and into a world they can barely imagine. Can she persuade him to risk everything to fix the burden that hangs between them—to turn back the clock and live their story a second time?

A breathless page-turner and a love letter to our planet, Under Story grapples with the great questions of our time: human hubris, the precarity of the natural world, and the mysterious webs of consciousness that bind us. A modern epic of science and soul, of bravery and redemption, it offers a vision of the future that demands we reckon with what we owe to one another, and to the earth itself.

I was really excited for Under Story, but I DNF’d it at a little over halfway. I listened to the audio and was constantly frustrated. I never connected with Laurel, even with the extensive backstory about every single person in her life. Her constant tangents about her past, which meandered with zero payoff, became unbearable. I kept waiting for the story to get back to the main plot.

Before I quit, I did a little research on the book and read plenty of Goodreads posts absolutely loving the story and ones absolutely hating on it. I stopped before I even got to the ridiculous Benjamin Button-esque Duoverse section where time runs backward, and humans emerge from the ground as elderly people before gradually growing younger until they return to infancy.

I think there’s a story here, but only if someone like Blake Crouch or Ray Bradbury were writing it. Unfortunately, I spent most of my time disliking the main character, not enjoying the writing, hating all the scientific exposition, and wading through prose that never really wanted to actually follow the plot.

Interesting concept, but definitely not for me.