Under Story

Laurel Salter is a biologist nearing forty whose promising career and personal life have gone completely off the rails. When we meet her, she has retreated as far from the world as a person possibly can: McMurdo Station, an American research base in Antarctica. And for the first half of this (long) novel, I was completely immersed. Laurel goes to Antarctica carrying enormous grief, the details revealed very slowly. Her marriage has ended, and a tragedy has caused her to run away from the life she once imagined for herself. McMurdo becomes escape and self-punishment. There is darkness, brutal cold, and strange rhythms of life at the bottom of the world. The author makes the station feel incredibly vivid, and I was fascinated by the scientists, the research, routines and isolation of Antarctic life. Against that backdrop, we learn about Laurel's past. And then her ex-husband, Eli, arrives. He is a physicist drawn there by a mysterious phenomenon in the sky that scientists have been unable to explain. That mystery leads Laurel and Eli toward questions about time and specifically their past. Unfortunately, somewhere around the halfway point, it lost me. Ideas and relationships became repetitive rather than revealing, and a story that had initially felt grounded began to feel increasingly implausible. There is so much here that I admired and I think many readers will be swept away. For me, Under Story was half of a great book, which feels more frustrating than reading a mediocre one!