About this item
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 shes just had a miscarriage - not her mother, her best friend, or her therapists (Dorothy has two of them) . She wasnt 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.
About the Author
Christine Smallwood is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, n 1, Vice, The New Yorker, Bookforum, T, and many other magazines. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University. The Life of the Mind is her first novel.
