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Under Story

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What to expect

What if tomorrow was already written, but yesterday was yours to change?

At an isolated research station in Antarctica, biologist Laurel Salter washes dishes for a living ten hours a day, six days a week. She tells no one why she left her career, or why her marriage ended.

But even in this remote outpost, Laurel can't outrun 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?

And this time, live it differently.

Once read, never forgotten, Under Story is a genre-defying exploration of the promise of this life, what might lie beyond it, and how far we would go for more time with the people we love.

Critics Review

A rapturously beautiful novel. I was in awe of Chloe Benjamin's universe-straddling imagination, her profound writing on love and grief, and her telescopic vision that lets her zoom into the smallest chambers of the human heart and far out again into the laws of theoretical physics. I loved Under Story
Kaliane Bradley, Sunday Times Bestselling Author of The Ministry of Time
Under Story is phenomenal, and one of the best books I've read in years. Wondrous, wildly ambitious, an epic love story that I'm so grateful exists in the world
Ann Napolitano, New York Times Bestselling Author of Hello Beautiful
Under Story is a spectacular novel. It is utterly transporting, with an imaginative scope that feels both breathtaking and profound. I was blown away by it
Clare Leslie Hall, Sunday Times bestselling author of Broken Country
A fiendishly clever, utterly original novel that gets to the heart of what it means to be alive. Under Story is dazzling, it will change you
Emilia Hart, Sunday Times bestselling author of Weyward and The Sirens
A mind-bending, head-popping sci-fi love story full of intrigue and tenderness
Claire Fuller, Author of Our Endless Numbered Days and Hunger and Thirst
Count on Benjamin to ask the big questions-what makes a life worth living? What is the nature of time? Where do we belong?-and entertain us fully all the while. Cannot wait to read...
Lit Hub, Most Anticipated Reads 2026
Under Story is a book that contains multitudes. Stunning and moving and ludicrously inventive, it's a remarkable feat of imagination. I've never read anything like it, and I won't soon forget it.
Bobby Palmer, author of Isaac and the Egg and Main Characters
The best book I have read in years, a brilliant speculative novel
Gillian McAllister, multi-million copy bestselling author of Wrong Place, Wrong Time
A head spinning novel, daringly imaginative. Even as she plays with physics and fantasy, Chloe Benjamin has much to say about the nature of friendship, family, mortality and love
Geraldine Brooks, author of A Year of Wonders
Chloe Benjamin is a time-bending, heart-breaking, head-spinning writer who has conjured an entire parallel universe to illuminate one family's loss. Under Story is the most imaginative novel I've read in a long time, and yet its scenes depicting the ordinary joys and sorrows of parenthood, marriage, and friendship are perhaps most magical. This speculative masterpiece has only one flaw: at 500 pages, it's much too short
Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Masterful, original, and powerful. Chloe Benjamin's Under Story is a mind-blowingly clever novel that packs an emotional punch. You'll be pressing copies into the hands of everyone you know
Lucy Clarke, author of The Castaways
I read books for a living and this is hands down the best thing I've read in 2026. A complete freaking masterpiece
Jordy Moblo, Jordy's Book Club
An epic, deeply moving (and mind-bending) story of healing, loss, mortality, love, connection, time. Staggeringly good. Chloe Benjamin is the queen of speculative fiction, and this is my book of the year
Will Dean, best-selling and award-winning author of The Last Thing to Burn
Author Chloe Benjamin
Duration 10 hours
Release Date
ISBN 9781035437429
Format Audiobook
Publisher Headline
Genre Modern and contemporary fiction, Science fiction, Speculative fiction
Availability AU, GB, IE

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