In Chloe Benjamin’s exquisitely imagined and emotionally rich Under Story, a woman moves to Antarctica in search of a fresh start and finds far more than she expected.
It’s an extreme choice. The icebound landmass where McMurdo Station is situated sees “less rain than the Sahara” and is so remote that airplane travel is restricted for months at a time. But researcher Laurel Salter is desperate, and a radical move feels necessary. She’s lost interest in her life and work—“even nature’s miracles were stripped, for her, of awe”—so when her mother tells her about a childhood friend living in Antarctica, she latches on to the idea and applies to be a dishwasher at McMurdo.
The move sets Laurel on a path to the change she yearns for. She settles in with the fellow “stewards,” cooking and cleaning for the scientists at the station, and starts to forge connections. But the novel and Laurel’s resurrection really take flight when Laurel’s ex-husband, Eli, shows up unexpectedly. Though Eli and Laurel aren’t on good terms, both are drawn to the environmental anomaly on the island: the Arc, a “small dome of light” that “appears to sit over the ocean.” It’s what lured Eli, a physicist, to McMurdo. “Faintly pink and translucent, with an iridescent skin” that has no scientific explanation, the Arc spurs them to think that Eli’s radical theory about two parallel universes might be true. He and Laurel grasp at the possibility of traveling to that parallel realm to correct the tragedy that led to their separation.
A moving, endlessly imaginative exploration ensues as Laurel and Eli seek healing on an otherworldly journey. What’s most remarkable about Under Story is how Benjamin (The Immortalists) balances speculative physics with a deeply relatable story of love and grief. For a book involving multiple dimensions and timelines, Under Story is incredibly grounded. Anyone who’s ever endured profound loss or felt stuck will recognize Laurel’s state of mind. Benjamin draws the depth of what Laurel and Eli are going through with aching precision, in prose that often reads like poetry, making this expansive literary sci-fi tale powerfully resonant.
