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The Life of the Mind: A Novel
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 she's just had a miscarriage-not her mother, her best friend, or her therapists (Dorothy has two of them). She wasn't 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.
"[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 she's just had a miscarriage-not her mother, her best friend, or her therapists (Dorothy has two of them). She wasn't 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.
Editorial Reviews
The End of March
Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail. The therapist was calling because Dorothy, who at this moment was rereading the flyer for student health services taped to the wall above the receptacle for used feminine-hygiene products, had left a voicemail at eleven o'clock last night canceling today's session. It wasn't that the miscarriage was such a big deal or that she was broken up in grief about it; it was that she hadn't told her therapist she was pregnant, and didn't want to have a whole session about her tendency to withhold. In the asymmetrical warfare of therapy, secrets were a guerrilla tactic. Not that Dorothy had been plotting to keep things to herself. She wasn't the plotting type.
It was day six, and she was still bleeding. Not the unceasing hemorrhage of the first ten hours-now it was thick, curdled knots of string, gelatinous in substance. In most cases of gestational stall it wasn't necessary to intervene; the body knew to spontaneously expel its failures. Perhaps that accounted for the trauma in other women's accounts-the element of surprise. You will know not the day nor the hour! In her case the body had held on, deferential, waiting for her to clear her schedule. The result was less than a trauma and more than an inconvenience. She would never know exactly when it had happened-when it had stopped happening-only that she had persisted for some time idly believing that she was persisting, her body busy fulfilling its potential like some warehouse or shipping center. How typical of her not to know something was over when it was over. And how typical that it was proving more difficult to extricate herself from the dead-end pregnancy, the halted progression, than it had been to become pregnant in the first place. Her womb would not let go. The contractions had needed two Cytotec suppositories before they would even start. Misoprostol was the drug's generic name, the same one they gave you for a medication abortion. But when she did it, when she self-administered the uterine evacuation, terminating a-what was it, exactly? What did you call it when a life stopped developing, but didn't end?
tests got you stressed? the flyer quizzed. don't despair. text to talk it out. A sad stick figure in one corner, a smiling stick figure in the other. kill yourself, someone had written in green ink above the smiler. stop the hate, someone else had written alongside, in letters so small they seemed afraid to draw attention to themselves. Then the hand in green ink had returned to draw a drooling penis with a thick beard and a natty top hat. Dorothy wondered if she had taught any of these students. It was possible.
She hadn't intended to lie to her therapist-if an omission eve...
Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail. The therapist was calling because Dorothy, who at this moment was rereading the flyer for student health services taped to the wall above the receptacle for used feminine-hygiene products, had left a voicemail at eleven o'clock last night canceling today's session. It wasn't that the miscarriage was such a big deal or that she was broken up in grief about it; it was that she hadn't told her therapist she was pregnant, and didn't want to have a whole session about her tendency to withhold. In the asymmetrical warfare of therapy, secrets were a guerrilla tactic. Not that Dorothy had been plotting to keep things to herself. She wasn't the plotting type.
It was day six, and she was still bleeding. Not the unceasing hemorrhage of the first ten hours-now it was thick, curdled knots of string, gelatinous in substance. In most cases of gestational stall it wasn't necessary to intervene; the body knew to spontaneously expel its failures. Perhaps that accounted for the trauma in other women's accounts-the element of surprise. You will know not the day nor the hour! In her case the body had held on, deferential, waiting for her to clear her schedule. The result was less than a trauma and more than an inconvenience. She would never know exactly when it had happened-when it had stopped happening-only that she had persisted for some time idly believing that she was persisting, her body busy fulfilling its potential like some warehouse or shipping center. How typical of her not to know something was over when it was over. And how typical that it was proving more difficult to extricate herself from the dead-end pregnancy, the halted progression, than it had been to become pregnant in the first place. Her womb would not let go. The contractions had needed two Cytotec suppositories before they would even start. Misoprostol was the drug's generic name, the same one they gave you for a medication abortion. But when she did it, when she self-administered the uterine evacuation, terminating a-what was it, exactly? What did you call it when a life stopped developing, but didn't end?
tests got you stressed? the flyer quizzed. don't despair. text to talk it out. A sad stick figure in one corner, a smiling stick figure in the other. kill yourself, someone had written in green ink above the smiler. stop the hate, someone else had written alongside, in letters so small they seemed afraid to draw attention to themselves. Then the hand in green ink had returned to draw a drooling penis with a thick beard and a natty top hat. Dorothy wondered if she had taught any of these students. It was possible.
She hadn't intended to lie to her therapist-if an omission eve...
Readers Top Reviews
ronald roscoeCharlie
Was written as a Text book, would never ,have read past first 20 pages f I had not paid for this Book Autobiographical type possible confession , of a no one with no beginning and no end Save your Money
I am enjoying the Audible edition of this book. The interpretation is excellent! So real, I can see myself withing the scenes, there, with Dorothy! Perfect. She says so many things we want to say and don't know how, Dorothy is a little part of every woman. I love this book and am having a hardtime putting it down so to speak. Reccommended!
Short Excerpt Teaser
The End of March
Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail. The therapist was calling because Dorothy, who at this moment was rereading the flyer for student health services taped to the wall above the receptacle for used feminine-hygiene products, had left a voicemail at eleven o'clock last night canceling today's session. It wasn't that the miscarriage was such a big deal or that she was broken up in grief about it; it was that she hadn't told her therapist she was pregnant, and didn't want to have a whole session about her tendency to withhold. In the asymmetrical warfare of therapy, secrets were a guerrilla tactic. Not that Dorothy had been plotting to keep things to herself. She wasn't the plotting type.
It was day six, and she was still bleeding. Not the unceasing hemorrhage of the first ten hours-now it was thick, curdled knots of string, gelatinous in substance. In most cases of gestational stall it wasn't necessary to intervene; the body knew to spontaneously expel its failures. Perhaps that accounted for the trauma in other women's accounts-the element of surprise. You will know not the day nor the hour! In her case the body had held on, deferential, waiting for her to clear her schedule. The result was less than a trauma and more than an inconvenience. She would never know exactly when it had happened-when it had stopped happening-only that she had persisted for some time idly believing that she was persisting, her body busy fulfilling its potential like some warehouse or shipping center. How typical of her not to know something was over when it was over. And how typical that it was proving more difficult to extricate herself from the dead-end pregnancy, the halted progression, than it had been to become pregnant in the first place. Her womb would not let go. The contractions had needed two Cytotec suppositories before they would even start. Misoprostol was the drug's generic name, the same one they gave you for a medication abortion. But when she did it, when she self-administered the uterine evacuation, terminating a-what was it, exactly? What did you call it when a life stopped developing, but didn't end?
tests got you stressed? the flyer quizzed. don't despair. text to talk it out. A sad stick figure in one corner, a smiling stick figure in the other. kill yourself, someone had written in green ink above the smiler. stop the hate, someone else had written alongside, in letters so small they seemed afraid to draw attention to themselves. Then the hand in green ink had returned to draw a drooling penis with a thick beard and a natty top hat. Dorothy wondered if she had taught any of these students. It was possible.
She hadn't intended to lie to her therapist-if an omission even counted as a lie. Dorothy hadn't been pregnant for very long, but she had been pregnant long enough to understand that unless she was very tactical in her behavior, her body and what she did with it, what she put into it, would be a matter of community interest. Maybe pregnancy changed the body from a private to a public thing, or maybe it exposed the nature of the body as already public. Whatever it was, it was something she wanted to talk out with her therapist, except when it was on her tongue to do so, the therapist had interrupted a warm-up story that Dorothy was telling about her boyfriend, Rog, to remark that he was "a keeper." Dorothy saw at once that after the language of "keeping" had been introduced into the room, it would be impossible to keep it from becoming attached to the pregnancy, to define the pregnancy in terms of a keeping or a not-keeping, when in fact Dorothy was not ready to talk about retention, even as a future decision toward which she was inevitably hurtling, and so she, driven into a cul-de-sac by a linguistic overdetermination that would have been rich material if she only could have borne it, said nothing.
The therapist had apologized for calling Rog "a keeper."
"Who you keep is up to you, not me," she had said, gazing earnestly into Dorothy's eyes, willing her into compliance, but Dorothy disagreed. What was this American fixation on doing it yourself? Wasn't she in therapy so that someone would tell her what to do? What use was expert knowledge, the years paid out acquiring experience, if it was kept in reserve, hoarded like canned goods, while the masses stumbled about, starving and ignorant? Voicing these opinions only worsened the situation; they spent the rest of the session processing the incident, and when Dorothy returned the following week, she couldn't find her way back, couldn't justify not having confessed the pregnancy right away. Time had intervened; an innocent delay had become a falsehood. So she k...
Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail. The therapist was calling because Dorothy, who at this moment was rereading the flyer for student health services taped to the wall above the receptacle for used feminine-hygiene products, had left a voicemail at eleven o'clock last night canceling today's session. It wasn't that the miscarriage was such a big deal or that she was broken up in grief about it; it was that she hadn't told her therapist she was pregnant, and didn't want to have a whole session about her tendency to withhold. In the asymmetrical warfare of therapy, secrets were a guerrilla tactic. Not that Dorothy had been plotting to keep things to herself. She wasn't the plotting type.
It was day six, and she was still bleeding. Not the unceasing hemorrhage of the first ten hours-now it was thick, curdled knots of string, gelatinous in substance. In most cases of gestational stall it wasn't necessary to intervene; the body knew to spontaneously expel its failures. Perhaps that accounted for the trauma in other women's accounts-the element of surprise. You will know not the day nor the hour! In her case the body had held on, deferential, waiting for her to clear her schedule. The result was less than a trauma and more than an inconvenience. She would never know exactly when it had happened-when it had stopped happening-only that she had persisted for some time idly believing that she was persisting, her body busy fulfilling its potential like some warehouse or shipping center. How typical of her not to know something was over when it was over. And how typical that it was proving more difficult to extricate herself from the dead-end pregnancy, the halted progression, than it had been to become pregnant in the first place. Her womb would not let go. The contractions had needed two Cytotec suppositories before they would even start. Misoprostol was the drug's generic name, the same one they gave you for a medication abortion. But when she did it, when she self-administered the uterine evacuation, terminating a-what was it, exactly? What did you call it when a life stopped developing, but didn't end?
tests got you stressed? the flyer quizzed. don't despair. text to talk it out. A sad stick figure in one corner, a smiling stick figure in the other. kill yourself, someone had written in green ink above the smiler. stop the hate, someone else had written alongside, in letters so small they seemed afraid to draw attention to themselves. Then the hand in green ink had returned to draw a drooling penis with a thick beard and a natty top hat. Dorothy wondered if she had taught any of these students. It was possible.
She hadn't intended to lie to her therapist-if an omission even counted as a lie. Dorothy hadn't been pregnant for very long, but she had been pregnant long enough to understand that unless she was very tactical in her behavior, her body and what she did with it, what she put into it, would be a matter of community interest. Maybe pregnancy changed the body from a private to a public thing, or maybe it exposed the nature of the body as already public. Whatever it was, it was something she wanted to talk out with her therapist, except when it was on her tongue to do so, the therapist had interrupted a warm-up story that Dorothy was telling about her boyfriend, Rog, to remark that he was "a keeper." Dorothy saw at once that after the language of "keeping" had been introduced into the room, it would be impossible to keep it from becoming attached to the pregnancy, to define the pregnancy in terms of a keeping or a not-keeping, when in fact Dorothy was not ready to talk about retention, even as a future decision toward which she was inevitably hurtling, and so she, driven into a cul-de-sac by a linguistic overdetermination that would have been rich material if she only could have borne it, said nothing.
The therapist had apologized for calling Rog "a keeper."
"Who you keep is up to you, not me," she had said, gazing earnestly into Dorothy's eyes, willing her into compliance, but Dorothy disagreed. What was this American fixation on doing it yourself? Wasn't she in therapy so that someone would tell her what to do? What use was expert knowledge, the years paid out acquiring experience, if it was kept in reserve, hoarded like canned goods, while the masses stumbled about, starving and ignorant? Voicing these opinions only worsened the situation; they spent the rest of the session processing the incident, and when Dorothy returned the following week, she couldn't find her way back, couldn't justify not having confessed the pregnancy right away. Time had intervened; an innocent delay had become a falsehood. So she k...
