Discontent
A Novel
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4.1 • 31 Ratings
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS' CHOICE • From a dazzling new international voice, an audacious, darkly funny novel about a young woman whose carefully crafted office persona threatens to crack when she’s forced to attend her company’s annual retreat
"A wry work of spectacular wit. . . . Beatriz Serrano writes with a caustic flare for detail, exploring the small humiliations of the everyday corporate office with charm and utter hilarity. Absolutely brilliant." —Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on an Execution
On the surface, Marisa's life looks enviable. She lives in a beautiful apartment in the center of Madrid, she has a hot neighbor who is always around to sleep with her, and she’s quickly risen through the ranks at a successful advertising agency. And yet she’s drowning in a dark hole of existential dread induced by the banality of corporate life. Marisa hates her job and everyone at it. She spends her working hours locked in her office hiding from her coworkers, bingeing YouTube videos, and getting high on tranquilizers. When she has the time, she escapes to her favorite museum where she contemplates the meaning of life while staring at Hieronymus Bosch paintings, or trying to get hit by a car so she can go on disability.
But Marisa's dubious success, which is largely built on lies and work she's stolen from other people, is in danger of being exposed when she's forced to go on her company’s team-building retreat. Isolated in the Segovia forests, haunted by the deeply buried memory of a former coworker, and surrounded by psychopathic bosses, overzealous coworkers, flirty retreat staff, and an excess of drugs, Marisa finds herself acting on her wildest impulses and is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The values of corporate life are practically burned to the ground in this biting satirical novel. Marisa is so convincing when she puts on an engaged, enthusiastic face at meetings or by the watercooler that nobody at her office suspects she actually steals her work, loathes her job, and is ready to snap at any moment. But with a mandatory work retreat in the woods coming up, that moment could be fast approaching. Despite her violent fantasies about her boss’ death, we couldn’t help loving the miserable and darkly hilarious Marisa. She doesn’t just hate working (though she certainly does). Or corporate culture’s eye-rollingly inauthentic gestures to inclusion and empowerment (though that all disgusts her too). She hates what her job stands for in the first place: selling people things they don’t need. Discontent is the cathartic dose of nihilism we could all use now and then.
