Hill is a freelance writer and editor who specializes in literature. In the following essay, Hill analyzes the contrasts between the aboveground and subterranean environments in "TheUnderground Gardens" and argues that these elements illustrate Baldasare's achievement of greater self-knowledge and independence.

"TheUnderground Gardens" opens with an epigraph that quotes Franz Kafka's story "The Burrow." It's a fitting introduction: "The Burrow" features an unnamed narrator (perhaps an animal, but with very human concerns) who, in typically drawn-out Kafka fashion, details his anxieties about his subterranean home. At times, his worries about the security of his burrow and the dangers that lie aboveground grow so extreme that he is unable to approach the opening that leads to the outside world.

Likewise, "The Underground Gardens" deals with the division between the world above and the world below. T. Coraghessan Boyle drives this point home with both the larger events of...