Years after The New York Times bestselling book “Immortalists,” Chloe Benjamin released her highly anticipated third novel, “Understory,” a fiction novel that blends science, love and grief into one story.
Just two weeks after the book’s release, “Understory” has been selected as the Good Morning America Book Club choice for September 2026.
The story follows biologist Laurel Salter shortly after her work, family and relationships seemingly all fall apart after one unfortunate event, and The New York Times notes that Benjamin’s unique approach is the novel’s true success.
“She wants to embrace the interconnectedness of nature and humanity. Ever-shifting and blooming with tremendous tenderness, ‘Under Story’ expands our expectations of living,” Laurne LeBlanc said in her review.
Benjamin does a wonderful job introducing a unique family: a fungi biologist, a physicist and a child. And yet, the characters feel real because of the emotion and humor written onto the pages. The story gets even more bizarre when a strange glowing phenomenon nicknamed “the Arc” becomes visible on the Antarctic ice.
Seemingly unimportant, this detail is revealed slowly throughout the novel as Laurel’s past is revealed one scene at a time. Benjamin ties each memory from the character’s past to a corresponding moment or trigger in the present-day timeline. While the beginning of the story moves a bit slowly, it all picks up when her ex-husband Eli arrives in Antarctica.
Her husband’s doctoral research concluded there may be a “duoverse” as opposed to a universe, and the mysterious lights across the ice may be the answer to his struggling physics career. Laurel sees this as an opportunity to fix what she failed to do: give her son a longer life.
Laurel’s depression is fluid, moving forwards and backwards. It is this raw reality in the narration that brings out the character.
Despite the speculative fiction elements that bring readers out of their own lives, Benjamin’s writing pulls on the heartstrings of grief, complicated relationships and anxiety. The book is lengthy, with over 500 pages, making parts of the story feel slow. However, it’s the slower moments that pull the readers back into reality.
“But as a depiction of grief, it is attentive, nuanced and humane, a powerful portrait of a woman navigating the fraught distance between pain and healing … Smart and wonderfully strange,” The San Francisco Chronicle said.
Laurel and Eli become a team to see if they can use geometric time travel to bring back their son. Ultimately, Benjamin’s story begs one greater philosophical question: would you change the past to save someone you love?
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