The Minimalist
A Novel
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- Pre-Order
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- Expected Aug 18, 2026
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- $14.99
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- Pre-Order
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
For fans of Tár and The Piano Teacher, this gruesome and unsettling psychological drama is a darkly lucid portrait of a classical composer’s descent into madness.
As the last and greatest student of famed minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, Mia Voss’s rise to prominence in the insular world of classical music has long been assured. When Ryder dies unexpectedly, she inherits everything—including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition, the mysterious Death Fugue: Music for Orchestra.
Haunted by memories of her tragic romance with Ryder’s late son, Oliver—like Mia, an Asian American adoptee—Mia leaves her girlfriend behind and returns to Ryder’s home to finish his last work. There, Mia is forced to confront her complex relationship with Ryder, who hid his Jewish and gay identities to become one of the most important twentieth-century American composers; her lingering guilt over Oliver’s suicide; and her own musical ambition as the manuscript begins to exert a disturbing, mesmerizing hold over her.
Drawn from the author’s own experiences as an adoptee and classical musician, The Minimalist is a harrowing examination of loss, torment, mental illness, self-harm, and artistic self-destruction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weeks before celebrated classical composer Ryder Wakefield dies, he presses his 30-something protégée, Mia Voss, to complete his work-in-progress, precipitating her plunge into the agony and ecstasy of the creative process in this harrowing psychological thriller from Pedersen (Sacrificial Animals). When a grief-numbed Mia returns to Ryder's modernist Santa Fe mansion after burying him next to his son, Oliver—a piano prodigy and Mia's former lover who died by suicide—she soon becomes overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge ahead and the memories that haunt the house's now silent rooms. She forgets just about everything else, including sleeping, eating, and her girlfriend back home, as her sanity suffers and she starts to fantasize about self-mutilation. Meanwhile, she reflects on the time she spent with Ryder and Oliver, all three supremely talented musicians who were never able to shake feeling like misfits: Ryder as a self-hating gay Jew, Oliver and Mia as Asian adoptees. Like the minimalist compositions that made Ryder famous, this disturbing exploration of identity, genius, and madness will not appeal to everyone, but it rewards close attention and resonates long after striking its final chord. Strong-nerved readers will be intoxicated.
