Chloe Benjamin's Under Story Review
A review critiques Chloe Benjamin's new novel 'Under Story' for its convoluted reverse-time premise and melodramatic execution, comparing it unfavorably to
Chloe Benjamin's third novel, 'Under Story', is a reverse-time melodrama involving quantum physics and parental grief. The Guardian's reviewer calls it 'quantum hokum' and finds its elaborate premise ultimately unconvincing.
The novel joins a tradition of stories that play with narrative chronology. Ian McEwan's 'The Cockroach' satirized Brexit with 'Economic Reversalism'. Martin Amis's 'Time's Arrow' inverted the Holocaust. Benjamin's contribution imagines a 'duoverse' where life runs backwards.
The Duoverse's Backwards Logic
In this mirrored universe, life begins underground with mycelium growing a corpse from rot. A heart starts, and a fully grown but elderly person crawls from the soil with a new brain. 'Overtakers' clean and DNA-profile these individuals before delivering them to their children. Brains age while bodies grow younger. Cancers unbloom. Children raise parents until they are spry. Death is birth, with neonates returning to the womb in 'maternity morgues'. The reviewer describes this as 'ghoulish stuff, body horror territory'.
A Grieving Couple's Journey
The plot follows a forward-born couple, Laurel and Eli, grieving their son Silas. They seek a portal under Antarctic ice to reach the duoverse, hoping to undo their loss. Laurel is a mycologist; Eli is a physicist who explains the reversed entropy driving this universe. They encounter a world where September follows October and extinct species re-emerge. The story becomes, in the reviewer's words, 'a 500-page melodrama of parental devotion and quantum hokum'.
The reviewer argues the novel's length works against its conceit. They cite F. Scott Fitzgerald's 'The Curious Case of Benjamin Button' as a successful, concise 40-page treatment of a similar idea. 'The longer Laurel and Eli stay in the duoverse, the more contrived it all feels,' the review states, noting Benjamin selectively applies backwards rules to bodily functions.
Narrative Machinery and Melodrama
A core criticism is that the author over-explains the duoverse's logic, answering questions readers never asked. The review contrasts this with Benjamin's previous novel, 2018's 'The Immortalists', which left room for doubt about its prophecy. 'In Under Story, she seems unsure her cosmic premise can carry its own mysteries,' the reviewer writes. The plot resorts to 'mystical anagrams and fortuitous gadgetry' to force a scene of filial reunion. 'It's hard to trust a novel that doesn't trust itself,' the review concludes.
The reviewer suggests the elaborate setup feels particularly gruesome because it weaponizes parental grief. 'She has violated the laws of physics, reanimated the dead and turned women's bodies into tombs all in order to weaponise parental grief,' they state. While meant to provoke profound questions, the novel instead prompted the reviewer to absurd logistical queries about palaeontology and anatomy, breaking their suspension of disbelief.
