The Minimalist

by Kailee Pedersen

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.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Music, Thriller, Adult

272 pages, Hardcover

First published August 18, 2026

About the author

Kailee Pedersen writes haunted, unsettling speculative fiction. She graduated with a BA in classics from Columbia University, specializing in ancient Greek. Kailee was adopted from Nanning, China and grew up in Nebraska, where her family owns a farm. She is the author of the queer poetry chapbook Pastorale and the novel Sacrificial Animals, which was named one of the New York Public Library’s Best Books of 2024 and a finalist for Best Horror at the 2025 Libby Book Awards.

When not scribbling down her next book, you can catch her studying opera performance at the Mozarteum University, playing video games, or working as a software engineer in New York City. The Minimalist is her second novel. Visit her website at kaileepedersen.com.

Photo by Garland Quek (www.garlandquek.com)

Reviews

[Nikki Lee (Nikkileethrillseeker)]

🎧Audiobook Review🎧

Mia Voss has inherited everything from the famed minimalist composer, Ryder Wakefield, after his death. She finds an unfinished manuscript of his final composition, Death Fugue and hopes to finish it.

She tells the story of her relationship with the composer and his son Oliver, whom she had a relationship with. As she begins her work, she starts to spiral into madness.

First, this book is not for everyone. It’s definitely a slow burn. It’s also geared towards people who have become obsessed with perfecting their work. In this case, writing music.

Natalie’s narration is perfection. She’s one of the best and if she narrates it, I’m listening. She does a perfect job with her decent into unhinged madness.

I enjoyed the audiobook and recommend it to anyone who enjoys slow burn literary fiction. Some parts read like a fever dream.

4 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

[⋆｡°·☁︎ sydney ⋆｡°·☁︎]

3.5 rounded up because of that WRITING
WOW!
This book is really something. I loved the uniqueness and how it is unafraid to take on different ideas of identity, and even stranger ideas of self expression
I rarely ever think of piano composers, but this book will make them forever cross my mind in an incredibly gruesome dramatic way.
The story is equal parts vignette and gothic novel, combined with a very unique, grotesque writing style!!
Overall, a good read, but not an easy recommendation!

[Cassie]

There was only the music, luminous, eternal, unbending, and when it sang, my heart sang, and where it went, my heart went also. When it came to music, that was the eternal question. Who was the possessor, and who the possessed? Had all this striving, all this painstaking study been to master the art, or to facilitate the art’s mastery over me?

Mia Voss is a composer tasked with finishing her mentor’s final composition after his death, and as she is increasingly consumed by the manuscript, she descends into haunting memories and into slow, creeping madness.

I have never read a book quite like The Minimalist before. And I don’t know how to describe it other than to say that the book itself reads like a piece of music.

Weaving back and forth in time, often repeating itself, alternating moments of shocking violence with moments of heartbreaking tenderness, The Minimalist is almost overwhelmingly immersive, like a mesmeric, hypnotic musical composition. I sometimes found myself struggling to follow the thread of the narrative, just as I would in a complex piece of music.

In dense and lyrical prose, Kailee Pedersen explores the intricate, sometimes unhealthy relationship between an artist and their art and addresses themes of memory, identity, obsession, and grief and loss in ways that are both poignant and harrowing. This is a difficult book to get through both because of the way it’s structured and because of the dark, disturbing journey it takes into the mind of someone in a mental health crisis.

The Minimalist is a hard book to recommend to a wide audience. It’s esoteric, it’s structurally confusing, it’s heavy on musical theory, and it’s incredibly grim. But I’ve read very few books where the execution of the narrative so perfectly mirrors the themes, so that the book itself feels like a piece of art. The Minimalist is one of those. Thank you to St. Martin’s Press for the complimentary reading opportunity.

[Jillian B]

The two most important people in composer Mia’s life have always been her mentor, Ryder, and his son, Oliver. After Oliver dies tragically, followed by his father, Mia moves into their home and tries desperately to finish Ryder’s final composition, an experimental piece called Death Fugue. Mia is driven to the brink of insanity as she pours everything, including her own severed body parts (no, I will not be elaborating) into completing the piece.

This is gorgeous literary fiction with elements of body horror, and if that doesn’t make you immediately want to pick it up, we have very different tastes in books. It’s told across multiple timelines as we are drawn deeper into Mia’s all-consuming love for Oliver and drive to match Ryder’s talent.

I can’t wait for more of you guys to read this one!

Thank you to the publisher for giving me access to an eARC of this book!

[Wynter]

3 stars

This is an unrelentingly bleak story about a musical prodigy who finds herself unraveling after the loss of the two people closest to her.

Stylistically, this is told in nonlinear snapshots of Mia’s past as she recounts her life growing up as the adopted child of an emotionally abusive mother, finding and losing her first love, and becoming a burgeoning composer in the shadow of her harsh but brilliant mentor. At the same time, we see glimpses of Mia in the present, grappling with questions surrounding the circumstances of her closest colleague/ex-lover’s suicide, the recent death of her life long teacher, and the monumental task of finishing his final manuscript after his passing. What follows can only be described as a free fall into madness as Mia struggles to reconcile with her guilt, her trauma, and her vehement belief that self destruction is the only way to unlock the ability to compose a piece worthy of her mentor’s legacy. To put it bluntly, things get really, really dark.

I will say, my own personal pursuit of knowledge on the topic of classical music ended after the 4 years of compulsory violin classes in school, so I felt like quite a bit of the opera and symphony references that were on nearly every page went completely over my head. I wouldn’t call the writing very accessible at all, but that’s what helped sell the characters as geniuses in their fields. If Kailee Pedersen didn’t write with such an absolute death grip on the English language, I might not have felt as compelled to finish this story as I did. I would absolutely read more from this author because she’s extremely impressive, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend this book to anyone who doesn’t know much about classical music or at the very least isn’t a fan of reading deeply about a topic they don’t know much about.

Thank you so much to St. Martin’s Press for my free advanced copy of this book!

[Becky Spratford]

Starred review in the June issue of Library Journal

Three Words That Describe This Book: Excruciating discomfort, Artist Descends into Madness, highly original

Draft Review: Too infrequently does a title perfectly set the reader up for the book that is to come, but in Pedersen’s second novel, minimalism, serves as the frame for this highly original, excruciatingly discomfiting tale of a young composer's descent into madness. Mia, 35, a critically acclaimed classical music composer, is left to complete her teacher’s unfinished final piece– Death Fugue– after his sudden death. Haunted by a life dedicated to music and her relationships with Ryder and his son, Oliver, as well as riddled with complex questions of identity as a Chinese born, American adoptee, trained to carry the Jewish legacy of her mentor, readers watch Mia spiral physically and mentally, as the pages of Death Fugue require visceral, disfiguring sacrifices of her. Told like one of Ryder’s minimalist masterpieces, Mia layers observations and experiences from her life, flowing in and out of past and present, repeating motifs, adding more detail, tension, and escalating dread with each repetition. Readers may think the frame will be too esoteric for them, until they realize they can feel (with all five senses) the obsessive horror of this tightly wound novel, throughout their entire body, whether they want to or not.**

Verdict: Clearly from a lineage begun by Robert Chambers in The King in Yellow, this is a novel for fans of the psychologically intense film Black Swan, and the extreme psychological distress, body horror, and disorientation of novels like Chlorine by Jade Song and The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.

I have NEVER used the word excruciating in a good way to describe a horror novel until now. It is the perfect word for you to understand how this book FEELS to read.

Other words– obsession, intense unease, discomfiting, visceral, body horror, terrifying, tightly wound, a slow burn that keeps you reading, classical music– so much detail that readers will want to pull up some of the pieces discussed and the cool thing is you can for some, but then there are the fictional pieces by the characters here and that is also discomfiting because they feel as real as the real pieces.

At first I was rating this book down because the frame is a little esoteric (and I am the mother of a child in music school who composes). But then I started to write my notes and I wrote this:

The topic may be a little esoteric but the way this book is able to make the reader FEEL the madness, obsession, disgust, the excruciating terror, discomfort, dragging out of the madness ect….that was done to perfection. You want to throw the book down and scream at it to move faster, but you don’t. You are stuck in this loop of obsession. The book is everything it tells you it will be in the title. Those 2 words seem so simple. But as you read you feel the power of minimalism to wrench every emotion out of you.

And another HUGE component of this story– identity. I didn’t make it one of the “words” because it is more of a theme, not an appeal. But Ryder is Jewish and gay but hid both those sides of himself for most of his life. The gay was because of the times. The Jewish, he lost so much sight of that when he tried to reclaim it in his music, it was too late. He is teaching Mia the ways of Jewish life and music and history though.

Mia is an adoptee from China – abandoned on the side of the road as 3 days old, adopted by her white American mother and raised as a white girl basically. She feels no connection to her Chinese-ness and yet is cited as an Asian American composer. Oliver is Ryder’s adopted Korean son. He is Korean. His mother was a student of Ryder’s. BUt she flees back to Korea and leaves Olver, the baby, with Ryder to raise. He is conflicted about his origins.

Carlos Gesualdo– you are going to want to look him up. Mia is obsessed with him. We learn early that she was always obsessed with him. He was talented but also famous for killing his wife and her liver in a particularly gruesome manner. It is mentioned and brought back many times. It was a great way to get readers invested in the dark side of the music world but also served to foreshadow what was to come in this book.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_G....

Told only from inside Mia’s head from her present, in Ryder’s home, after he dies and she is left to go through his things and most importantly, finish his final work– Death Fugue.

Like a minimalist work for music– it is similar pieces repeating over and over, overlapping in ways that allow the entire story to grow but at an excruciatingly slow burn– excruciating being the key word here because this story is SO intense, SO uneasy, SO much tension that as it begins to be “released” it is both visceral and full body levels of upset– again excruciating.

Also like a work of classical music-- this story was technically perfect. Things were overlapped and ordered in a way that pulled out the most tension, emotion, and discomfort in the reader. The same story told in order, and with other protagonists does not hit the same way. It is not a horror novel if done differently.

This the the closest book I have seen to capturing how it felt to watch the film Black Swan. I remember going to the theater to see that artist goes mad, psychological horror masterpiece and I was riveted the entire time. And then when it ended, I could barely stand up. I had been (without knowing it) clenching all of my muscles with the tension. My body hurt.

This is a book you FEEL in your whole body much like the first 2 readalikes-- For books, there is a lot of Chlorine by Jade Song here but our protagonist is a musician (not an athlete) and 35 during the present of the book, but there is a lot about her coming of age years. Also the weird body horror and disorientation of The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa.

The King in Yellow– it’s lineage is CLEAR here. Best recent book for that is A Game in Yellow by Hailey Piper. This book is less erotic, but not without sex either.

[Cyndi Farfsing]

This book is a beautiful and hauntingly raw exploration of grief, self-loathing, the cost of art, and perfectionism. The prose is beautiful, the atmosphere is unsettling, and the pacing is intentionally disorienting as you follow Mia’s descent into madness while she grapples with her past. The author does an excellent job of creating an increasingly claustrophobic atmosphere that mirrors Mia’s unraveling.

With that said, I wanted to love this book. The premise is intriguing, the prose is lovely, and the themes are thoughtfully explored. However, I often felt that the themes themselves were driving the story more than the plot, and I found there wasn’t enough narrative momentum to keep me turning the pages. I understood what the author was trying to accomplish, but it ultimately didn’t resonate with me. The plot often felt secondary to the thematic exploration, which kept me from becoming fully immersed in the story.

I went in expecting a horror novel, and that ultimately wasn’t the reading experience I had. It was certainly unsettling, but the horror often took a back seat to the novel’s literary ambitions. Readers who enjoy slow-burn, poetic literary fiction will likely appreciate this far more than I did. By the end, the frequent flashbacks began to feel like variations on the same emotional beats rather than revelations that continued to deepen the story. Personally, I need a stronger sense of forward momentum and discovery. This is a beautifully written novel with thoughtful themes, but in the end it simply wasn’t the right fit for me.

[Olivia]

Let me take a few days to combine my notes, look into the music themes more and come back with a review. This was so up my alley but what a gut punch

[Stacy (Gotham City Librarian)]

Absolutely gorgeous. I’m so glad I ended up with an ARC of this. It was dark and disturbing and by far one of the saddest books I’ve ever read.

Main character and narrator Mia at first comes across as pretentious and vain, but also very self-aware. Maybe TOO much so at times, as her self-reflexive musings tend to repeat themselves. Conversely, Mia is also overwhelmed by grief and self-loathing, consumed by the task of finishing her beloved mentor’s final composition. She is determined to score the rest of it, even (or especially if) it kills her.

The overall tone of this novel is quiet. The unsettling parts really sneak up on you, like blood dripping silently onto piano keys. It’s obvious that the author really understands music, because the writing flows like an instrumental piece in this way. A gentle whisper that gradually builds to something startling. The violence will surprise you. And there were moments that broke my heart, as well. I was especially impressed by the dialogue between Mia and Ryder, which tended to come across as harsh a lot of the time but had a lot of emotional depth beneath it.

I wish I could see a live performance of “Death Fugue,” the piece that Mia is obsessively trying to complete. It transcends music and becomes a disturbing art piece, like something that Marina Abramovic would do if she wanted to destroy herself. I was fascinated. In a much, much milder way, “The Minimalist” almost feels “American Psycho” adjacent, except Mia’s violence is directed back at herself.

One thing worth mentioning is that there are no quotation marks on any of the dialogue, a tactic that usually doesn’t bother me but did become problematic this time. The story also jumps all over the place between past and present with no sense of transition and can be disorienting. (At times I wasn’t sure at first if something was a flashback or if Mia was meant to be hallucinating.)

If you are in a dark place mentally or emotionally, I might advise you to tread carefully with this one because it goes to very dark places. (And it’s well written.) Though I can easily see horror fans losing patience with it. The way it jumps around in time can be confusing, the constant naming of composers and music pieces can be a tiny bit monotonous and the pace is slow. But trusting the process is so rewarding. This was a gorgeous and visceral experience that I will be thinking about for a while.

4.5 stars rounded up.

Thank you to Netgalley and to the Publisher for this early copy in exchange for an honest review! All opinions are my own.

TW: *Suicide/Suicidal ideation, *Self-harm, Disordered eating, Racism, Slurs, Sexual harassment, Domestic abuse

[Jamedi]

The Minimalist is quite a unique book, a novel whose brilliance is difficult to capture in words, captivating the reader with what is a thorough analysis of the main character, dissecting her life while we deep dive into her experiences and how they shaped her, taking the opportunity to closely examine the nature of art and the artist, and showing a world full of bright moments but which hides the darker ones from the public such as classical music; all in a novel with a minimal plot.

A literary piece that follows closely Mia Voss, the last student of the minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield after his sudden death; she has inherited everything, including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition, Death Fugue: Music for Orchestra. As Mia takes the mantle of her mentor to finish it; a metaphorical journey in which Mia will reexamine her past, confronting her complicated relationship with Ryder and how she's still experiencing guilt over Oliver (Ryder's son) suicide, and her own ambition to complete a composition that is engulfing her, exerting a mesmerizing hold over her.

Pedersen soon turns the narration into Mia's character study, a slow dissection that goes in parallel with her descent into the darker parts of her psyche. We get to experience not only how she feels as an adoptee, but how the classical music world has been a cruel yet beautiful one; identity and its erasure in order to fit is one of the central themes of this book, as you can see it represented by the own characters, but also that obsessive strive for a perfection that drives many artists.
Through multiple timelines that are smartly woven together, we will get glimpses of how the canvas that was Mia was filled, how loss is crucial for her and the many conflicts that are still beguiling inside her.

The Minimalist takes its sweet time to lay all the pieces we need to understand what's passing by Mia's mind, a sort of slow burn that felt as the adequate pacing for this kind of novel.
The writing is gorgeous, with a use of prose that shows Pedersen's ability to create equally beautiful and disturbing images, definitely becoming unsettling at moments, but entrapping the reader as Mia was by Death Fugue.

Whatever I can say about The Minimalist will be rather short of its brilliance; it's not a novel for everybody, but it's the kind of proposal that will resonate with certain people, especially as you can feel how personal this was for Kailee Pedersen. An author who is in my auto-read list, and whose next book I can't wait to read!

[Lauren Lo]

I’d like to thank NetGalley, the author, and publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this novel. 🫶🏻

The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen was one of those books where, even beyond the story itself, I found myself completely captivated by the writing.

There was something almost musical about Pedersen’s prose. Reading it felt like sitting in a grand concert hall, listening to a pianist and an opera singer perform together. Each note and movement perfectly placed, separate pieces were somehow flowing into one another until they became something whole. The words had this rhythm and elegance to them that genuinely blew me away. Nothing felt clunky or out of place. Everything seemed to move in harmony.

There were moments when I was less focused on what was being said and more amazed by how beautifully she was saying it. Her writing has a richness to it without feeling like it’s trying too hard to be beautiful. It simply is. Atmospheric, lyrical, haunting, and incredibly intentional.

The story itself didn’t quite reach that same five-star level for me, which is ultimately why I landed at 4 stars, but the prose? Easily one of the biggest standouts. This is the kind of writing that makes me want to pick up whatever Kailee Pedersen writes next simply to experience the way she puts words together again.

Beautifully written, hauntingly composed, and proof that sometimes prose can feel less like reading a book and more like listening to music. 💖🎼

[Sam]

Wow! I just finished reading this and am floored by how hauntingly beautiful this was! The Minimalist by Kailee Pedersen is written beautifully, and written with care despite the dark themes within. Overall this is an exploration of identity, and follows the main character, Mia. The story goes back and forth between the present and memories from Mia’s past. Typically I find this confusing and sometimes disjointed but how Kailee writes these scenes, I find are seamless. The story is also a bit slower paced but picks up quickly and soon I couldn’t put it down. I love this writing style as it emulates the spiral into madness.

Recommended to those who like slow burn descents into madness, explorations of identity, race& relationships, visceral body horror, overall bleak story. It’s definitely a specific recommendation but I will be recommending it when I can!

Thank you, thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the eARC in exchange for review!

[Hadyn]

“A performance, no matter how beautiful, can only have so many encores.”

My gosh this was written poetically. So many moments of tenderness against moments of pain - I felt it was almost a memoir rather than a novel.

This would have been a 5 star read if I had a background in music, as some of the information was hard to understand. I truly wish I had a soundtrack to listen to during this and would be interested in how the audiobook works through any of this.

At first I did not enjoy the back and forth of the time jumps, but I do think it added to the sense of her descent into madness and the repetition of her thoughts and memories.

I loved the writing and would 100% read this author again.

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

[Carey Calvert]

Caught up with the author Kailee Pedersen whose debut novel, Sacrificial Animals, named a Best Horror Book of 2024 by The New York Times and Esquire, among many others, is a supernatural horror rooted in ancient Chinese mythology, and was my favorite of that year.

So much so that I couldn’t stop talking about it. Whether someone wanted to get shocked back into reading, “Sacrificial Animals,” need a literary fiction boost, a psychological thriller? “Sacrificial Animals,” and of course, horror, Sacrificial Animals became a second language.

But here, on this night, in Houston, at the premier bookstore for all things murder, Murder By The Book, Pedersen’s sophomore novel, THE MINIMALIST, a “gothic meditation” on one woman’s descent into madness, pins its hopes on the full breadth of its multitalented (opera singer, poet, actor) author’s skills.

Pedersen delivers a virtuoso performance.

I bought the audiobook to float on the performer’s (Natalie Naudus) voice on my three-hour trip to Houston. What a perfect opportunity to be fully immersed in the poetic and haunting prose of who the Times calls “a great writer with a strong voice and an obvious love of language…a future master.”

It made the trip feel like a run to the store.

With SO much on my mind.

The last wish of celebrated classical composer, Ryder Wakefield, is for his now thirty-something protegee, Mia Voss, to finish Death Fugue: Music for Orchestra, a task that plunges Voss (and the reader) headfirst into the heavy on the anguish and rhapsodic creative process that allows for the perfect multivoiced harmonies inside Mia’s head.

Minimalism: audacious in its repetition and its flaunting of convention is all you need to know to prepare you for this journey. It is Pedersen’s hope that the music consumes you.

Held captive in a vehicle for half the novel, listening to Mia extract your own voice, while she descends, dragging you with her, led to an empathy, that debilitating narcotic, I may not have discovered until After I finished the novel, i.e, I couldn’t “put the book down.”

(and I think You’re crazy if you thought I could turn it off - Man, I was composing Death Fugue right alongside Mia!)

As with Sacrificial Animals, do Not give Pedersen three characters to sink her teeth into. Pedersen chews them up and leaves the metallic taste in Your mouth.

Her writing exposes the fissures you thought you covered and plumbs depths of mental illness I’d never considered and has me thinking of THE MINIMALIST for the many miles to go before I sleep.

THE MINIMALIST is an expansive and intense pressure cooker that will wreck you.

[Chelsea (gofetchabook)]

The writing is far too pretentious for my taste. It was distracting me from being able to figure out what was going on in the first chapter.

[Amanda]

This book is a masterpiece. An absolute expert study in processing grief and identity and how to negotiate those things and maybe how to not suppress those things. The prose in this piece is absolutely stunning, what a mastery of language and how lyrical and rhythmic it can be. I think this book started gorgeous and ended profound and I can’t wait to read more from Kailee.

[JenJenReads]

This was 5-star perfection for me. I was completely captivated by Mia’s descent into obsession and madness. The atmosphere was dark, unsettling, and absolutely mesmerizing. I love the way grief, ambition, guilt, and identity were all woven together.

Natalie Naudus was the perfect narrator for this book. As always, her performance was fantastic!

Thank you to NetGalley and Brilliance Publishing for the opportunity to listen to this title in exchange for my honest review.

[Wallis]

This book was absolutely gorgeous. The writing was incredibly beautiful, and Mia was a fascinating narrator. I am neither a regular horror reader nor particularly interested in classical composing, but Pederson (and the narrator) kept my attention the whole time. I could not stop listening, despite how much I was tempted to at points. It was much darker and contained more bodily mutilation than I enjoy reading about, but readers who are less sensitive would probably love this even more than I did.

Thank you to NetGalley for the audiobook ARC!

[Virginia]

The Minimalist was disturbing descent into madness, and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Absolutely beautiful writing, dense in a way that makes you feel smarter just reading it. I loved all the references to real pieces of music and composers, it grounded the story in reality even as Mia’s life spun out into unreality. Mia’s mind is an excruciating place to be. This was a harrowing read. I am definitely going to check out Kailee Pedersen’s other work after this!

[Donna McCaul Thibodeau]

I gave up on this. I didn't care for the author's style of writing, and nothing seemed to be happening. DNF.

[Mackenzie Marrow]

Content Warning: This book is about self harm, suicide, and abuse. If any of those are serious triggers for you, be cautious ❤️

“He had loved me, certainly; he loved me like a little bird, a baby bird he could crush to death with his hands.”

The Minimalist is an atmospheric read that is best consumed under the right circumstances. For me, that was alone in the middle of the night, tired as hell, listening to the classical compositions mentioned in the text with a creeping sense of dread and abandonment. If you pick up the novel sporadically on a sunny day, it might not have had the same weight. Our characters have a dark obsession with their work, and for me, and I felt it helpful to set the stage for my spooky immersion. Also, why on earth would someone publish a gothic horror novel in a sans-serif font. Wild work.

“When the music leaves the body, when the orchestra stops playing we are together again, at last, in the space of terrible beauty. That void of perfect silence.”

Mia Voss has nothing left in the world but music. At one time, her whole world was her mentor Ryder Wakefield and his son Oliver. Even while they were estranged, it was only the three of them. But now it's only Mia. She has been abandoned in this mortal plane and is desperate to rejoin Oliver and Ryder in death. Mia, now alone in their great and lonely house must complete one final task to end the trios story. She will finish Ryder's final composition, his life's work, 'Death Fugue", and it will signify the end of her as well.

Music is not correct, it is beautiful.

I loved Pedersen's contemplation on art and why/how it is created. Does art intrinsically have to have meaning and a deeper core? Or is it simply allowed to be. And what happens when the artist, is purposefully taught not to put the self into their art? When we cannot connect to our emotions, what is there to stop the cyclical nature of pain and despair?

“My detachment was a selfish thing. I was indifferent to everything that happened to me, as a means of survival.”

Nature vs Nurture? All her life, Mia has been made to distance herself from all that would make her human. Her culture, her family, her emotions, wants and desires. Her mentor all but taught her that those who put their own emotions and experiences into their art are lesser and self-absorbed. It is too vulnerable and embarrassing. So Mia became the anthesis of a self-possessed artist, and on a more fundamental level, the anthesis of a human being. Purposefully not engaging with the broader world has its consequences when it comes to her passion and life's work as a composer. She has no basis or foundation to pull that emotion or the background of human connection and feelings, that is so often a prerequisite for art, from anywhere but Ryder and Oliver. Her first big piece was written for Oliver, him unknowingly as her muse. And with his and his father's death, her only way to pull that intense emotion needed for 'Death Fugue', has to come from inflicting pain and torture on herself. It is the only way she is able to reach this emotion needed for her final work. To keep her alive just long enough to end it all. Mia Voss is a tragedy in the truest sense of the word.

"Minimalism repeated itself. It could do nothing except repeat itself. Yet within this, there was formal daring, a crystalline purity to the structure of each piece, an a relentless intensity that could be almost unmatched.”

The pull-quote comparisons for The Minimalist are "Tár" and "The Piano Teacher". I have not seen either so here are mine:

A) Nasty and unhygienic body mods to achieve your goal that is (probably?) worth it and the protagonist likes girls

- Last to Leave the Room by Caitlin Starling.

- The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

B) Dark Academia adjacent where the mentee is chasing after the idea of their mentor. Protagonist is very knowledgeable about their given field and you will have to do some googling if you want a full picture.

- Katabasis by R.F Kuang

C) Gifted mentor/mentee relationship where they are both 1) emotionally repressed 2) off their rockers 3)linked forever together by the fates and time. 4) violent obsession

-The incredible Kdrama series "Hyper Knife"

[domsbookden]

The Minimalist is a very well-written novel that I suspect will generally fall short of some readers’ expectations, largely because of the misplaced horror label attached to it. To me, this is much more compelling as a work of psychological literary fiction than as a horror novel.

The novel shines most in its eloquent writing and its hyper-specific incorporation of classical music. I really enjoyed the stream-of-consciousness prose and the in-depth material on composers and music theory. I can understand why the sheer amount of classical-music detail might be too much for some readers, but I’ve always found it fascinating when an author introduces expertise into a novel, especially when it’s a subject I know very little about. That kind of knowledge brings a higher level of authenticity that can’t easily be faked or replicated, and I liked getting a glimpse into the world of classical music through Mia’s perspective.

Where The Minimalist didn’t quite work for me was in the execution of Mia’s descent into madness and, more broadly, in the narrative progression. Her obsession with the Death Fugue and her subsequent spiral didn’t hit as hard as I wanted them to, and while they did make the story more subversive in tone, I don’t think they were strong enough to fully push it into horror territory. There are moments of body horror, but they didn’t do much for me, and I doubt they’ll have much impact on readers who regularly read horror.

The novel spends so much time inside Mia’s head without enough external plot development to accompany her psychological deterioration. The narrative follows a cyclical pattern: Mia thinks/ponders/reminisces, Mia obsesses, Mia mini-spirals, then it all loops back around to Mia thinking/pondering/reminiscing some more. I felt that there was enough material to support a more consequential progression, where Mia thinks/ponders/reminisces, then does something unhinged that escalates consequences and therefore develops a new plot thread leading to increasingly more extreme spirals. Throughout the book, I was both genuinely interested in Mia as a character and puzzled by just how little actually happens.

The Minimalist's strengths are its prose, its subtle psychological character study, and the depth of its musical subject matter—not its hints of, but ultimately underwhelming, unhinged descent into madness. I think this novel will work best for readers who like psychological literary fiction or if you enjoyed Chlorine by Jade Song or Carrion Crow by Heather Parry.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Jess Reads Horror]

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martins Press for the eARC.

Mia was adopted from China as a baby, and she came to the United States with a unique talent for music. Under Ryder Wakefield’s guidance and teaching, she has since risen up in the world of music, with some critics saying the student has surpassed the teacher. With both Ryder and his adopted son Oliver deceased, Mia has to pick up the burden of completing Ryder’s final work.

3.5 stars rounded up. Starting off with what I did enjoy: the atmosphere, the intensity of the emotions, the vivid descriptions, and the music lessons I never knew I would have enjoyed. It felt very claustrophobic for me, not necessarily due to the physical aspects, but more due to Mia’s world, the way this book is basically a whole rundown of her thoughts and memories. Mia fits the tormented artist perfectly, and this can be seen throughout the whole book.

Mia working on and attempting to finish Ryder’s final
piece definitely threw her down the road leading to… something. Everything she did and experienced during these days felt intense, emotional, and raw. With that, I do wish there was more of an expansion on this work as it felt like such a huge part of the story. Like one of the triggers of everything else that followed.

I really did enjoy learning more about the classics, even though it did bring up some of my unpleasant memories around pianos. I also greatly appreciate the author shining a light on experiences for adoptees. I rarely come across these in books.

[Rebecca]

I feel completely gutted out after following poor Mia’s spiral. This is not a story to be recommended lightly or approached blindly. Although I never reached the level of musical performance Mia and Oliver were capable of, my years in piano and vocal lessons made so much of this tragedy hit even harder for me personally.

[Azhar]

almost a tepid 4 stars but it was still pretty good, scalding at times with the prose. the writing is heady & lush, and it took me a few seconds to really get into the meat of it. there are truly shocking moments in this - especially the body horror sections, some of them even had me screaming “yikes” - and the ending is so haunting.

[AK]

If nothing else, this book at least reignited my love affair with Liszt

[houk]

This is one of the easiest ratings I have given in a while; The Minimalist is a truly stellar novel. It's simultaneously deeply cathartic and unpleasant to face. While not an easy reading experience, it is a rewarding one, and one that, to me, felt necessary. Pedersen displays a masterclass of writing a haunting, of the mirrored obsession and destruction, the warring seduction and devastation of allowing something to upend and thoroughly transform one's life. It became an instantly personal novel to me for many reasons, and one I find myself already looking forward to returning to. I'm itching for a physical release, if nothing else so I may annotate it to hell and back as I so desperately craved to throughout. I will be recommending this book to any and everyone. It may not be for everyone, but it is certainly for me.

[BONNIE SMITH]

Well, that was unsettling.

This book is written beautifully, and it really felt like an unraveling of a mind and soul. Set in a creepy, atmospheric musical setting- this book just felt like something crawled under your skin and made you squirm in the night.

Now- if that is exactly how you like your psychological thrillers, perfect!
For those that need more of a "jump scare" or "plot twist" formula, this might feel slow to you.

While this is not my normal read, I was very thankful for the chance to read when St. Martin's Press sent a copy.

It's different than anything else I've read, and even after finishing it- it tends to linger on your mind!

[Trisha]

A huge thank you to the author and publisher for providing an e-ARC via Netgalley. This does not affect my opinion regarding the book.

[Adamsfall]

In her sophomore effort Kailee Pedersen has delivered a stunning meditation on family, identity, legacy, and the madness that walks hand in hand with genius.

I know a book is a step above the rest when I feel the intense passion for the subject matter through the narrative. In the case of The Minimalist, that subject is music composition. The level of understanding of music composition, opera, and orchestral music that Pedersen displays goes above and beyond that of mere ‘good research’ and offers us a glimpse into the well of her talent pool. At times, I felt myself lost within the constant mentions of pieces of music or famous composers, left to scour the Internet for what is real and what was fabricated for the book.

I could sing this books praises all day, but I also want to properly assess expectations. The Minimalist is slow going. It refuses to hold the reader’s hand throughout the journey, instead choosing to let the reader get lost in the world and the twisting narrative of love, lose, and madness. When you make it out the other side, or should I say if you make it out, you will be forever changed by the music.

5/5 ⭐️