Superior Reads: Review of The Net Beneath Us

Dunbar’s writing is evocative and as lush as the forest. Structured in four segments: Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer, we watch Elsa flail and falter and then grow in strength and confidence as each season passes. THE NET BENEATH US is about the promises we make and keep – to ourselves and to others – and the profound work of grief – how it cleaves us in two and yet, we live, allowing the days and months and years that pass bind us back together, the two halves of a split trunk like the before times and the after times, joined in the middle by the heartwood.

“Grief isn’t just about the person you lost,” Dunbar writes, “it’s about losing the person who you were when you were with them, and who you go on to become.”

THE NET BENEATH US can be ordered today from your favorite bookseller. Highly recommended for fans of Maggie O’Farrell, Nichole Kraus, and Ann Patchett. Listen to my interview with Carol Dunbar September 22 at 7:00 pm on Superior Reads, WTIP Radio, 90.7 Grand Marais, or stream it from the web at wtip.org.

— Lin Salisbury

Superior Reads, A Place for Readers and Writers, July 2022