The Life of the Mind: "Sharp and funny." (Daily Mail)

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'Calling all millennials - this is the comic novel for you.' - The Times

The Life of the Mind opens with Dorothy sitting on a library toilet, checking her phone and examining the "thick, curdled knots of string" coming out of her body. No one but her boyfriend knows that she's had a miscarriage, not even her therapists -Dorothy has two of them.

An adjunct professor of English in New York City with no hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy's stuck, unable to envision the future or cut ties with the past. "What did you call it," she asks herself, "when a life stopped developing, but it didn't end"

Christine Smallwood's debut is a campus novel like no other. Piercingly intelligent and darkly hilarious, it moves from a classroom to an underwater puppet show, from a conference in Las Vegas to a karaoke party. It is a discomforting glimpse into the head of a brilliant woman on the edge, it is a novel about endings: of youth, of professional aspiration, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies.

'A jewel of a debut . . . abundantly satisfying.' - Jia Tolentino

'This book made me laugh out loud; its pages are marked by a snorting ungenerous glee that is at times indistinguishable from despair.' - The New York Review of Books

Reviews

'A jewel of a debut... abundantly satisfying.' - Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

'200 pages of serious entertainment.' - The Times

'Sharp and funny.' - The Daily Mail

'Brilliant... Dorothy's sharp, witty narration makes this book something special. The result is like the glorious love child of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney.' - Publishers' Weekly (starred review)

'This book made me laugh out loud; its pages are marked by a snorting ungenerous glee that is at times indistinguishable from despair.' - The New York Review of Books

'One of the wittiest, most deliciously farcical novels I've read in a long time. - NPR's Fresh Air

Author Bio

As a critic, Christine Smallwood is known for her hilariouspieces about Britney Spears, Stephanie Meyer and WernerHerzog. She has written for The New York Times, the NewYorker and Harpers. Her fiction has appeared in The ParisReview and N+1.