The Life of the Mind
A Novel
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, The Atlantic, Electric Lit, Thrillist, LitHub, Kirkus Reviews • A witty, intelligent novel of an American woman on the edge, by a brilliant new voice in fiction—“the glorious love child of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney” (Publishers Weekly, starred review)
“[A] jewel of a debut . . . abundantly satisfying.”—Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
As an adjunct professor of English in New York City with little hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy feels “like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had nowhere else to be but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise.” No one but her boyfriend knows that she’s just had a miscarriage—not her mother, her best friend, or her therapists (Dorothy has two of them). She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be a mother. So why does Dorothy feel like a failure?
The Life of the Mind is a book about endings—of youth, of ambition, of possibility, but also of the meaning that an inquiring mind can find in the mess of daily experience. Mordant and remorselessly wise, this jewel of a debut cuts incisively into life as we live it, and how we think of it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Literary critic Smallwood debuts with the brilliant story of a young academic powering through her existential dread. Dorothy languishes in "adjunct hell" at a university in New York City, teaching up to four literature and writing courses per semester (including a course she designed titled "Writing Apocalypse"), while her affable boyfriend helps pay the bills from her two therapists. Each fall, she holds out an ever-dwindling hope to land one of the several jobs that open up in her field. She's just had a miscarriage, and as the weeks pass, she muses on the menstrual blood and tissue discharge that results from her at-home Cytotec treatment. Dorothy is an intensely cerebral creature. Her narration of interactions with others, whether exchanging text messages with a friend, giving money to a panhandler, or parrying with her peers, is filtered by literary analysis, often to hilarious effect ("This man is an albatross around my neck," she thinks, after the panhandler she'd dubbed the "Ancient Mariner" follows her to another subway car). As she confronts her emotions about losing the unplanned pregnancy and reconsiders her ideas about endings, both literary and corporeal, she begins to reconnect with herself. Dorothy's sharp, witty narration makes this book something special ("In the asymmetrical warfare of therapy, secrets were a guerrilla tactic," she decides, after putting off a session with her primary therapist). The result is like the glorious love child of Otessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney.
