Discipline
A Novel
-
- Pre-Order
-
- Expected Jan 20, 2026
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
A taut, electrifying debut about a woman forced to confront unsettling truths about herself, her past, and the life she rebuilt following a ruinous affair with her former mentor, from a “lit world phenom” (Harper’s Bazaar)
“An exhilarating, exquisite book, full of an eerie intelligence and startling compassion . . . a pitch-perfect novel.”—Ayșegül Savaș, author of The Anthropologists
A BEST BOOK OF THE SEASON: Bustle, Debutiful, Harper's Bazaar
I have the sense that something is being drawn between us. Not drawn as in line but as in arrow pulled back. Yet I don’t know which of us holds the bow, and which of us faces the arrow.
Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, she’s seeking answers—about how to live a good life and what it means to make art—through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers, and friends.
But when the antagonist of her novel—her old painting professor—reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her that he’s read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control. When her professor invites her to join him at his house, on a remote island off the coast of Maine, their encounter threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she’s imagined it.
A pristine and provocative high-wire act toggling the fictions we construct for ourselves just to survive and the possibilities that lie beyond them, Discipline launches a spellbinding inquiry into the nature of art-making and rigor, intimacy and attention, punishment and release.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
This cunning and concise novel combines a meditation on art with a story about how we shape our own narratives. When art student Christine lives through an annihilating relationship with her professor, the experience puts her off of painting completely. She instead turns her story into a book, but when its publication leads to the professor contacting her—and even asking to meet—she’s pulled into a confusing web of the pain she endured and the story she told herself to live with it. Author Larissa Pham gives us piercing insight into Christine’s turmoil as it bubbles up into the outer world. Her prose is lush and immediate, especially when she drops us directly into Christine’s head, where it suddenly feels like we’re paging through an intoxicating exploration of the relationship between artist and creation. Don’t be surprised if you come away with fresh insights into the workings of the creative mind and the human heart.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pham, author of the memoir Pop Song, turns to fiction with the dazzling story of an art critic who publishes a novel about the former professor who rejected her after their affair. On Christine's book tour, she takes stock of her motivations for writing the novel, reexamines her connection to the work of the artists who shaped her, and reflects on how she floundered in art school until a popular professor began consistently praising her work and extending invitations to his home for social gatherings. After they had sex, he stopped contacting Christine, causing her to spiral and cease painting altogether ("It was too hard to decouple my work from my body, which felt like something I was carrying around, burdened with and stained by association"). Pham's novel takes a dramatic turn when Christine begins receiving cryptic messages from the professor, who invites her to visit him in Maine. It's a page-turner, but the main event is Christine's meditations on art, ambition, and the relationship between art and life, as when she looks at the photorealistic paintings of Vija Celmins ("I had never truly tried to replicate life the way Celmins did, in its exactitude, down to the finest detail. But I did think there was something important, maybe even necessary, in trying to make something that depicted, even if not life as it was, then life as how it felt"). This is electrifying.
