The Vivisectors: The deliciously dark new campus novel from the author of the cult hit The Doloriad

by Missouri Williams

‘An astonishing novel by an astonishing writer. Playful, digressive, and pulsating with existential energy’ MICHAEL MAGEE

‘Fun, biting and wise’ ZOE DUBNO

‘As brilliant as it is dark … unlike anything I’ve read before’ VULTURE

The acclaimed author of The Doloriad returns with a wildly imaginative and daring new novel following a reclusive graduate as her attempts to navigate campus conspiracies set her on a collision course that will upend her once quiet life.

In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss. One day, a campus scandal threatens to rupture her carefully managed Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated conflict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination. As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe remains unmoved. But when her boss instructs her to turn double agent and gather information by befriending Adam, Agathe finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?

Coursing with icy suspense and rendered with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for a broken era. Missouri Williams holds up a mirror to humanity’s most intimate contradictions and reflects them back through a novel of blazing spiritual reckoning.

Genres: Fiction, Literary Fiction, Dark Academia, Horror, Short Stories, Academia, Novels

289 pages, Kindle Edition

Expected publication May 26, 2026

About the author

Missouri Williams is a writer and editor who lives in Prague. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Astra, Granta, and Five Dials. Her first book, The Doloriad, was published this year by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the US and Dead Ink Books in the UK.

Reviews

[Readergirl · Rating 2 out of 5]

The voice? -Amazing
The utterly beautiful vocabulary that touched my soul? -Gorgeous
The main charcter? -Infuriating
The plot? -ermm.. plot who?

𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱
Hi! And Welcome to my very first ARC review! i wish it was a positive experience, but unfortunately I do not lie.
𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱

We follow the story (?) of Agathe, who is SINGULARLY the MOST infuriating, annoying, self centered, unrealistic charcater i have ever met in my life. She gave zero shizz about anyone around her, and not in the good way. Helloo? she drowned her mother WHO WAS IN A VEGETATIVE STATE... I honestly had to read that thrice cuz I wasn't sure i was reading that right. My mouth fell open, i swear I looked like a goldfish for 5 mins over there. She bullied her boss for no reason, gave no explanations for why she ever even acted that way. Her thoughts and acts repulsed me- she had no empathy for other and treated others as if they were the cardboard cuts, paper dolls who have no feelings or emotions or problems.

The Voice
The voice was beautiful. I found myself drifting off, entranced by just how DEEPLY the author felt about the words she was writing, but I could also tell that this was the AUTHOR not the NARRATOR who was saying the words she was saying. The symbolisms of the story were not lost on me and I enjoyed that aspect of it immensely, even though it never really felt like it connect to teh story properly (even though i strongly suspect that i was supposed to).

The Plot
The plot wasn't there. There was buildup and I found myself waiting for SOMETHING to happen. It continually felt like I was waiting for a really good plot that was JUST COMING. But it never came. It built it up and up and my curiosity was piqued but I was let down tremendously.
We didn't even meet the driving force of the plot, the male lead till the 80% mark. And even he wasn't that good to keep me interested. There was basically nothing between the characters adn any sort of relationship felt forced and abrupt. I felt like ti could've been fleshed out more, had the author not suddenly realized that her word limit was near and tried to fit the whole book in the last 20% after wasting the reader's time in the first part.
The lengthy rambling chapters were exhausting sometimes, especially when I wasn't able to draw any connection between the character or WTF WAS GOING ON?

The introspective aspect was lost as soon as the male lead entered and the entire plot shifted its tone, which was extremely odd and uncomfortable for me. For I, as a reader, was led to believe that the entire POINT of the story was going to be otherwise.

The Charcter Development(?)
This charcater was made for charcater development. I could see that. The author knew that. And yet, any sort of "charcater redemption" only happened in the last ten pages, if you could even call it that, because she only told another "meaningful" short story by the way of apologizing for everything she did, which was INADEQUATE to say the very least. OH yea, and this is when she drowned her mother btw so idk how her apologies worked.

𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱

Final Verdict
Finally I would like to say, I love how this was written. And if the writer actually had a PLOT to write about I would've loved this book very much. but unfortunately she didn't and so I couldn't stand it. The narrator did unforgivable things that she didn't repent for or even realize in full. I had high hopes for this, but here we are.

𖤐✮⋆˙♱𝕻𝖗𝖊 𝕽𝖊𝖆𝖉𖤐✮⋆˙♱

A dark academia that would make me want to slice open a piece of my head to peer into my mind (grotesquely put but ykwim) ?
Yesss plssss

𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱

PS- I would like to thank NetGalley, the author and the publisher for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book in exchange of my honest review. Thank you!

𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱𖤐✮⋆˙♱

REVIEW TO FOLLOW SOON

[CJ Alberts · Rating 2 out of 5]

Girl what the hell was this about

[Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

January 1, 2026 Update I've now finished the new novel The Vivisectors (expected publication UK May 21, 2026 and USA May 26, 2026) thanks to a preview ARC from NetGalley and can confirm that although this short story shares its title, it is not itself part of the novel. The short story also involves students at a university, but it is not the outright dystopian academic satire that became the theme of the novel.

Teaser for Novel to Come?
Review of the short story as published in Astra Magazine (July 20, 2022)

Missouri Williams recently announced via X (formerly Twitter) that their next novel would be The Vivisectors, to be published in the Spring of 2026 according to an article in The Bookseller.

Two years sounds like an extremely long leadup time for a work that was complete enough to be the subject of a bidding war by publishers. Presumably there are still editing and proofing stages to be done so it remains to be seen if that will be the true schedule.

In the meantime, there is this excerpt (perhaps Chapter 1?) which was made available online via Astra Magazine in July of 2022. If the title alone wasn't disturbing enough, a read of the 7-page story will confirm that the upcoming novel is likely to be as shocking as William's post-apocalyptic novel The Doloriad (2022) even if it is the supposed "satirical campus novel" as described by The Bookseller article.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has affected me deeply... makes me want to be different but I'm not sure in what way

[endrju]

The Doloriad was the book of the year for me back in 2023. If you had dog ears, you could’ve heard me squealing with joy when I was approved on NetGalley for The Vivisectors ARC. I quite possibly hit infrasound, to be honest.

The experience of reading The Vivisectors was… complex. There are motifs recognizable from The Doloriad, especially the environment and environmental collapse. The atmosphere, however, is significantly different, as there is no disfigural violence, so to speak. That doesn’t mean Williams has given up on her signature density. Once I abandoned the idea of treating this as a novel in a conventional sense and began approaching it instead as a constellation of elements - motifs, narrative threads, etc. - I started to get somewhere. Where exactly did I end up? I’m not entirely sure. But the fact that I’m still thinking about the book weeks later suggests that something definitely happened.

The mold song:

I was born by a window,
In somebody's room.
It rained and it rained.
The water fed me.
It was never enough -
I was hungry.

The room was a kingdom,
But I was no king.
I was little and lonely,
small and hungry.
A patch of black mold
With small hungry dreams.

One day I noticed
On the beam above me
A patch of dry rot.
It was large and majestic.
It had many eyes.
They all winked at me.

[m. · Rating 4 out of 5]

missouri williams: to me she is god

[Ellen Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very consuming read, I really enjoyed the flow of this book and the narrator. This book is some really relatable themes like academic drama, career chaos, family drama, and discrimination. Loved the suspense throughout and the way it shows how communication or lack thereof can affect things. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.

[Marcus (Lit_Laugh_Luv)]

I read books about graduate students to overcome my own trauma of being a graduate student hehe!!

[m. · Rating 2 out of 5]

eARC provided by Netgalley in exhange for an honest review.

I'm not really a big believer in the 'show, not tell' advice that is often given to writers. I believe a certain amount of balance is required. Like, I don't need to read three pages describing a room—just like I don't need to be spoonfed every detail about a character's personality through exposition. In The Vivisectors we encounter a strange case: in each section of the novel, Williams is doing one or the other. There is no balance or equilibrium here. Everything is either handed to you, over and over again, in short, sharp sentences, or drawn out over endless paragraphs.

There is a lot of repetition in the writing, and it doesn't seem stylistic. Rather it feels like I'm getting hit in the head with information that could be, instead, passed onto me in a natural way. For example, towards the end of the novel: That evening my uncle had visitors. Then, later in the same page: My uncle's friends were visiting him, and he had opened the doors to the library.

Every time a plot point is set in motion Williams forces it to a halt by info-dumping on a new character, community within this world, past event, or by going on a rant about politics or literature. It makes for an agonizing read. It feels like a constant push and pull—or maybe like a tug of war where Williams is dangling me over the edge of a precipice. Look at this cool thing I wrote! she screams over at me. I try, helplessly, to climb up the rope of her endless, meandering paragraphs, to reach stable ground for even a minute. Only to have her pull me over another hole the next second.

I'm naive and hopeful. I want to attribute this to a lack of editing, and have it not be a choice made by Williams. But then there are moments where the point she's trying to make becomes clear, and I'm left bitter and disappointed. Like when the narrator describes herself as having a rock inside of her: But at the center of my soul there was a big dead rock that wanted nothing to do with anything else (...) She uses that same metaphor consistently throughout the book, so much so that it gets tiring.

Most of all, though, I have to admit I'm confused. I'm not really sure what Williams is trying to do here. She seems to be making fun of herself a lot of the time. A character goes on a multiple page rant about the current lack of quality of modern literature, and he exemplifies this decay by pointing out that most contemporary narrators don't have names—much like Williams' own, which remains unnamed through most of the book. But she also seems to take herself extremely seriously, especially towards the end of the book, within the tight, messy frame she developed.

In a slightly fantastical world of unnamed cities, where nature seems to run wild and grow into huge, lush gardens that no one can keep at bay, Williams seems preoccupied with our own world's problems. She talks about academic decay, immigration and cancel culture within a university structure—problems of which I know nothing about, having escaped from college as quickly as I could. As a result, none of it interests me. I can't say it's entirely her fault, as my deep uninterest in academia has absolutely nothing to do with any of this. She does, however, fail to make me interested in any other aspect of this novel, which is the important part here.

Where in The Doloriad, the characters harshness and bleakness contrasted against their world's own disillusionment, in The Vivisectors the characters blend in and fade against their city's sterile backdrop. None of them are well constructed or developed throughout the book. They all seem like rounded stereotypes, with one or two definiting characteristics that the author exploits over and over again, to no avail. The main character is angry and unfeeling—her boss is needy and stupid—Adam is charming, but empty—her mother tried to kill herself.

The novel, which has a cold, eerie feeling throughout, turns into a mushy love story in the end. I had expected that, and it's precisely because of it that I hoped the author, whose past work I have loved dearly, would prove me wrong. She didn't. In my mind The Vivisectors is a small, metal ball. It's clean and shiny, but impossible to hold on to. It slips between your fingers and it makes a lot of noise when it hits the ground.

[kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

arc received from netgalley in exchange for an honest review

beautiful and dense book which problems lie in it’s narrative and stylistic imbalance. still worth reading imo but read the doloriad first

[thebookybird · Rating 4 out of 5]

Utterly bizarre but I dug it

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

The wheelbarrow makes a return! Love to see it!

[Roger · Rating 1 out of 5]

It's significantly shorter than The Doloriad, but somehow just as dull.

[Elle · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

Sadly this book did not gel with me at all. I have given it two stars on the basis of how pretty some of the writing is, but unfortunately those segments were far and few between. Occasionally I’d hit on a sentence that went right to my heart, but for the most part, I felt like I was reading the absence of a book.

I think that probably encapsulates the feeling of this novel for me best- it really did seem like I was reading a lack of a thing, which was weird. I can’t say any of the characters stood out, or that I remember any particular scenes or specific elements of the book. It just felt so vast and empty, and not in a way that felt intentional- more so in a way that felt sad and dissatisfying.

I am keen to read other works by this author as I understand that they have previously written some really beautiful pieces, but I feel like I definitely missed the boat (and everything else!) with this one.

[Antonin Kilian · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Vivisectors come as a surprise after Williams' debut success with The Doloriad. Just as The Doloriad, it is confident and masterfully constructed, entirely in control of its prose, while also being as engaging as any bestseller.

This is the singular achievement of the book: The Vivisectors is an incredible read, a modern campus novel that touches upon numerous contemporary issues and taps into our shared Zeitgeist, but it is also one of the most daring literary fictions of this decade. How extraordinary is the chorus of gardeners? Have you read anything as wild as the mold song? All the while, each chapter and scene fits into this labyrinthine space that, no matter which turn you take, leads to philosophical questions that too many writers just glance at.

The Vivisectors, for its concerns and metafictions, is best compared to Gerard Murnane's The Plains or Nathalie Sarraute's The Golden Fruits, especially in the way that it embeds a discussion about its own techniques along with those of modern literature more generally into its very texture.

Ultimately, Missouri Williams presents not just a book that showcases stark artistic growth, not just a reading experience full of thrill and emotional impact, but also, and most importantly, a mature meditation on our dark times and what literature faces today.

[amanda]

reading this while waiting in line at chipotle was an Experience

[Alan (the Lone Librarian) Teder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Academic Dystopia
A review of the NetGalley ARC eBook released in advance of the Farrar, Straus & Giroux / MCD (US May 26, 2026) and Fourth Estate (UK May 21, 2026) hardcovers / eBooks / audiobooks.

At first glance, The Vivisectors is completely unlike Missouri Williams' debut The Doloriad (2022) which had a breakthrough success by winning the 2023 Republic of Consciousness Prize and other accolades. Instead of a post-apocalyptic dystopia we have a setting in an unnamed university in an unnamed city and country. The university is decaying in its own dystopic manner though through lack of both physical and perhaps intellectual maintenance.

The lead character, a post-graduate named Agathe comes from a dysfunctional family and now works for a dysfunctional professor at the university. Agathe is basically doing all of the professors' work for her from preparing lectures to marking papers. Meanwhile the prof becomes obsessed with a student named Adam who is in conflict with the university authorities. The university and the city are meanwhile in conflict with the city's maintenance workers who are called the gardeners, so that the infrastructure is going back to nature as plants and vines and ivys envelope the buildings.

This doesn't have the scale of horror that was The Doloriad, even if the decaying infrastructure does signal some sort of coming apocalypse. There is the nod and a wink to Doloriad fans though towards the end when Agathe is forced to take her decrepit mother for a "walk" by using a wheelbarrow.

I'm sure that it could all be read as a metaphor for universities, cities and societies in general in our present day. What most impressed me was that Williams would write something so completely different from her first book. Its meaning is still enough to haunt me regardless.

My thanks to Farrar, Straus & Giroux / MCD and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this advance ARC copy for which I provide this honest review.

Trivia and Links
Although you might have expected that Williams' short story The Vivisectors (2022) would have been an excerpt from the novel, in fact it does not appear at all. There is a bit of a cross-over theme of an academic setting, but that is all.

As always I was curious about the cover art used for both the US and UK editions. Even with the aid of the reverse image search engine Tin Eye I still couldn't trace a source for the US cover though. The UK cover was easily identifiable though as a cropped image from the painting The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio where the "doubting Thomas" has to probe the wounds of the resurrected Christ before he will believe.

[cycads and ferns · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Like vivisectors, we analyzed a situation until we had proved the presence of evil, and nothing could escape our scalpels…More than anything, she said, we loved to sit in judgment. This city! If only it would rain and keep on raining and carry all the streets and the suburbs away, and us along with them. We were vivisectors, she repeated.”

A university and a city in decline, with gardens overgrown.
“Meanwhile the university watched the wildness growing at the heart of the city with fascination. It was a symbol, the academics agreed, of a much greater entropy. Something was underway, a process that could not be stopped. All we could do was let it happen. And besides, they insisted, what was material was secondary, distracting. The sooner we relinquished our hold on it the better. Then we could retreat into the world that mattered, the world of thought, without any distractions. They had a different border to protect.”

Agatha’s disappointed father, her disabled mother, and her estrangement from both.
“All I could imagine existing between us was the strange, restless silence that had characterized our interactions from the very beginning…a conversation had never started, and as the years mounded up behind us the possibility of beginning one had seemed more and more remote, and besides, that imaginary conversation had already become irrelevant because the silent one that raged around its edges was enough to occupy everyone's attention.”

Her mother attempted to end her life, failed, and was left physically and mentally diminished.
“She believed that he no longer loved her sufficiently. He gave her no reassurances to the contrary...After months of vague paranoia my mother had acted in the only way she knew how. With no one left to inflict herself upon, she had inflicted herself upon herself. The results had been dramatic. There was irreversible damage...My mother, my uncle told me, would not be the same as she had been...Good, I replied.”

Agatha lived in an old house with her uncle and worked as an assistant to an academic. Foreign students came from afar to attend the university but the citizens of the city refused to accept the immigrants into their society. Adam, an international student, had a disagreement with a young professor from the university and the news of the argument spread quickly throughout the city. Agatha was tasked with understanding the nature of the conflict.
“I had begun to be in the world and I had found it unbearable….Now that so many doors had been opened, I was determined to close them again—they had been opened against my will. I wanted to live according to my principles, to rediscover the internal compass that until recently had never led me astray. I wanted to create a little order.”

[Chelsea Knowles · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance reader copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.*

The Vivisectors follows Agathe who works for a university professor in a city overrun with vegetation. There is tension between the university professors and a group of gardeners over how the city should be run and what should be prioritised for the city. Agathe essentially does the work the professor should be doing such as lecture notes and marking student papers. One day, one of the professor’s students, Adam says something to another professor which leads to a conflict with Adam and the professor saying they have been discriminated against. Since Agathe’s boss is close with Adam, she tasks Agathe with befriending Adam so she can gather information on the conflict. Agathe has a lot going on with her family and as she observes the changing city, she becomes drawn to Adam but it’s hard to know what the truth is and if she can trust his version of events.

I really loved this book and I think it is so clever. It’s difficult for me to describe this book because really, you just have to experience it. The book feels a little obscure and it required a lot of my focus. I would recommend this for fans of The Emergency by George Packer as that book has a similar vibe and theme to this book. The writing of this book is truly fantastic and this whole book is on another level. I quickly connected to the story and Agathe as a character. This book has a lot of parallels to our world and I took a lot away from this novel. There are reflections on masculinity, politics and oppression. I throughly enjoyed reading this and I would recommend this book for a very specific type of reader. This book is perfect for readers who like introspective novels which have low plot but a lot of conversations and important monologues. This is a book that makes you think and it requires you to really sit with it and consider what is being told to you. I loved it and this book might be a favourite book of the year for me.

I have so many favourite quotes from this but this one stands out to me:

“My politics were neutral. I used the terms people told me to in order to avoid being told off, but I didn’t really care about any of it; I was just doing what was expected of me, like most people do. I had never really believed in anything.”

[ezra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and FS&G for this ARC!

“The Vivisectors” is Williams’ second feverdreamish novel. Told both through the POV of our main character Agathe, someone you just can’t quite get a grip on, and snippets of surreal dialogue by other characters, this novel takes you on a journey through a dystopian city overrun by plantlife.

This is a book I find extremely difficult to review. You are almost forced to consider, analyse, and philosophise about this book. To start thinking about it and not stop.

Similarly to Williams’ first novel, “The Doloriad”, this book has themes of a world at the edge of a steep cliff, of nature taking back the world from humanity. Unlike her debut, this book also discusses themes such as academic disillusionment, discrimination in academic spaces, and, in a way, cancel culture.

The writing is at once distanced and descriptive, sterile and stealthily emotional.

Agathe is a character that hides from the reader. She goes on long, ranting paragraphs describing everyone and everything around her, but the way she describes herself gives you the sense that she’s always holding something back, keeping secrets. Actually, all of the characters in this novel feel deliberately cold and sterile, forcing you to focus on their words and actions rather than any kind of “vibe” you get from them.

Now you may think “Hey, that’s great and all, but what exactly is the plot of the novel?” Beats me! There are several conflicts: Agathe vs her boss, Agathe vs her father, Agathe vs Adam, Adam vs a certain professor, the gardeners vs nature. Beyond that, I would not know how to describe the plot of this book to you. It’s all wonderfully surreal.

All in all I would say I enjoyed this less than I enjoyed “The Doloriad”, but it is still the kind of novel I will find myself thinking about again and again in the months to come. Would I generally recommend this to just anyone? Definitely not. Would I recommend this to litfic enjoyers who want to explore an extremely detailed, deeply analysable novel? Yes!

[Cate Murray · Rating 4 out of 5]

the blurb of this book should literally just be ‘an epic tale of the war between the gardeners and the academics.’

that’s it, that’s all i’ve got.

‘The Vivisectors’ follows the narrator Agathe, who works for a rich professor in some sort of fictional university town. an incident involving a foreign student called Adam causes Agathe’s boss to worry about her job security and she makes Agathe befriend Adam. and that’s kind of the plot? except Agathe has a really complicated relationship with her partners, including her mother who is brain dead, and there’s also a gardeners strike that really impacts the city.

i felt like nothing happened in this book. there was a lot of academic rambling which is stereotypical for a book of this kind, which was interesting to read but added nothing to the overall story, but problems were created and stayed until the last 5 pages of the book in which they were resolved - i.e the gardeners. her relationship with Adam was enjoyable to start with but there was so much more to be explored, including her own reluctance to her feelings for him.

the relationship with her parents was underdone, obviously something happened and it is alluded to but we never find out what it is, so are left in the dark. it’s also unclear when Agathe herself knows what happened. again, there was so much more to dig into there.

i did enjoy the minimal world building and in my own head, i began to create my own ideas around the little information we’d been given. there wasn’t nothing majorly that i disliked, i just wanted more of everything. it was a slow start and the author had a tendency to repeat herself, quite frequently.

i think i would like to read her first book ‘The Doloriad’ as many people have said that it is excellent.

thank you very much to Harper Collins for my proof copy of this interesting little book, which comes out on 21/5/26, so if you’re a dark academia fan, this one’s for you!!

[Nick Artrip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I requested and received an eARC of The Vivisectors by Missouri Williams via NetGalley. The novels' reclusive narrator spends her days doing the work of her needy and fraudulent university professor boss. A campus controversy upends her routine: Adam, a confrontational young man and favorite of her boss, falls under scrutiny following an argument with a young professor, with both men claiming discrimination. As the crisis consumes the rest of the campus, the narrator finds herself indifferent, as she is with most things in life including her mother's attempted suicide. When she is ordered by her boss to befriend Adam, however, the narrator finds herself caught up in the events.

There are many interesting things about The Vivisectors. On one hand, Williams uses the narrative to pose big moral questions about how we form judgments and connections in a world where communication skills have largely been set aside in favor of approaching every conversation defensively. Who is the arbiter of truth? Can more than one truth exist? On the other hand, The Vivisectors is a remarkably insightful character study. One of those most compelling elements of the novel is everything that Agathe doesn't say. She isn't afraid of cutting others to the quick in her observations, but what is more fascinating is the way she avoids and resists the undesirable in her personal life.

The pacing and the prose, while brilliant reflective of the protagonist, were at times difficult for me to manage. There are long, winding paragraphs musing about ethics and “the city” that never seemed to end. I found these valuable, especially in what they had to say about Agathe’s worldview, but there were times when it detracted from the eeriness and tension that had felt so carefully crafted at the beginning of the novel. The story doesn’t really lose any steam, however, it just prods in different directions and probes deeper. A very interesting read!

[Nadia Gustab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received this book from the publisher as a Waterstones Bookseller proof.

This book is so utterly bizarre, but it just works. This book is constructed in such a unique manner, with different formats which shouldn’t work together, but do, and consequently create a nice flow to the story.

The biggest achievement of this book was its original dystopian setting and philosophical explorations of a variety of themes. It touches on numerous contemporary issues, such as the education system and its injustices, immigration, global warming, modern decline. It made me really question my own ideas on what makes a ‘dying city’ vs an ideal one. It is set in a city that was once the greatest, dominating all others with its profound intellectual reputation, but its citizens have grown tiresome of progress, and let it slowly decline into a ruin. Vegetation and nature begins to dominate the city, and officials find it incredibly hard to maintain and live in such a harsh climate that doesn’t accept them anymore. I’ve never read of any city like this. it is depressing but thought provoking, it holds up a mirror to our own realities.

The characters are multidimensional, so many discussions and opinions are raised, and there are so many quotes id love to share but can’t before the publication date. The only downside to the novel was the lack of plot for me, it didn’t feel like much was happening and majority of it was idea-driven, so not much happens in terms of action. But it is originally written with incredible skill and precision, a perfect example of literary fiction. I’ll still be contemplating this book weeks from now.

[Ryan Davison · Rating 5 out of 5]

A female narrator (unnamed until the middle of the book), helps a professor manage an academic career on urban planning in an unnamed city being overrun by surrounding gardens and landscapes. We learn the professor is rich, obese, and emotionally scarred, and our young narrator "assists" the deluded woman fabricate an existence by doing all her work. This story is told with washed out emotions; the narrator loathes her own family except for an uncle she lives with and the entrance hall to the family home is decorated with portraits of past relatives turned backwards. Mom has just tried to off herself and is now a vegetable and much more. Also, there’s a vast population of gardeners that work with military precision and wield incredible power keeping certain areas of the city habitable.

The plot develops but remains secondary to the gorgeously stripped-down prose that excises the extraneous. This is an ideas-driven work and even with an abstract plot so rich with of analogy, you can’t put it down.

The Vivisectors is a towering literary achievement, written with a pen and scalpel. The lack of specifics or pleasantries is refreshing because it allows firm focus on incredible writing. It will lingers after you have finished, and you likely won’t be sure why.

Williams is a young author with incredible skill and vision. Highly recommended to fans of literary fiction or those who savor immaculate writing.

Thanks to NetGalley and MCD for a review copy.

[Courtney]

Thank you to NetGalley for providing me this book in exchange for a review- all opinions are my own

I really tried with this book but I ended up dnf’ing it. I loved the premise of the is book, I even read some spoiler free reviews because I had requested it to make sure it was right for me, and on paper it absolutely was perfect for me, it felt like I should have loved this book but I just did not get on with it.

I want to start by saying some of the writing and descriptives are beautiful, I highlife so many quotes in the 35% I did read because they really resonated with me.

But the rest of what I read just did not work. There was no plot in what I had read, it could be that the plot kicks in at a later time but at 35% I would expect to have some understanding or glimmer of the plot. It doesn’t even need to have a plot it may have been of a character study style but it more so just felt like word vomit.

It could have been a mockery of itself, as there is a rant of literature, but it overall just felt confusing as a reader. I have tried to read this on three separate occasions but each one just did not work for me.

I wish this would have as the premise does sound really interesting, I would be tempted to pick this up again and try again but for now I don’t think this is for me, if you are a fan of abstract writing and confusing plot lines then give this a go

[julia ｡･:*˚:✧｡ · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thanks to Netgalley for the eARC!

In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by vegetation, where power is held in a fragile balance between the academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, Agathe spends her days listlessly propping up the career of her fraudulent professor boss.

One day, a campus scandal erupts: Adam, a contrarian and the pet student of her boss, comes into heated confict with a rising young professor, with both men claiming discrimination.

As the crisis consumes the university, Agathe's boss instructs her to gather information by befriending Adam. Agathe soon finds herself both caught up in the events tearing the city apart and increasingly drawn towards the alluring student at the heart of it all. But can anyone be taken at their word in a struggle over the truth?

wow, 'we sure live in a society' ass book

Ok, I did like this. The rambling, waterfall-esque style of writing is probably not everyone's cup of tea but I enjoyed it.
Adam? A wet paper towel of a character. No substance and he bored the everliving hell out of me.
Agathe also has no personality whatsoever but at least that felt intentional. Also, her boss was so incredibly uninteresting as a character.

The conversations and jumps from topic to topic felt like a fever dream at times.

[River · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was excited to read this book as I really enjoyed The Doloriad but this just felt lacking in any real substance. I love the author's writing style and the imagery she creates, I just don't really understand what the point of any of it was. Maybe there was something there that was just going completely over my head, or maybe the point of the book is that there is no point, but overall it just left me feeling nothing much of anything.
The greatest love story ever told was a repeated theme throughout the book with multiple people telling different versions of the story, but whether or not this was intended to be a love story in and of itself I couldn't really say. The two characters barely interact and when they do the overall impression is that neither of them particularly like each other right up until the final moments of the book when... they do? I don't know. I just don't know what the intention was behind any of this, but the writing was beautiful nonetheless.
It's just difficult to put into words. I didn't find it boring or unenjoyable, I just don't know what any of it meant.

Thank you to Harper Collins publishing for an early access copy in exchange for an honest review.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I will say that the prose of this story is very beautiful and flowery to the point of being purple prose, but again very beautiful. The problem was that for a satire about university, this did not feel very satirical, in fact, the story felt so meandering that it really said a whole lot of nothing. There was a lot of repetition and circulatory nature of the plot, which could have been the point but made the story feel never-ending. Also, the descriptions of the main character’s boss felt very fatphobic, especially because she was set up as the antagonist of the story, and her laziness and stuffing her face just felt like ways to show another moral failing to make her the antagonist when her weight isn’t important to the plot. There were also some off putting descriptions about the autistic character, and as an autistic person, the descriptions left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I can’t in good faith recommend this to people due to the fatphobia and weirdness about autistic people.

[Suki J · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you to Fourth Estate and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

3.25 stars.

I requested this ARC as I saw the UK cover and was anticipating something unhinged. That was not entirely what we got here.

I'm not sure I can really summarise the plot, other than it's based around academics in an old university in a crumbling, unnamed city being overtaken by plant life. Agathe, the main character, is asked by her boss to get information on a man called Adam, with whom the boss has been involved in a disagreement.

Not a lot really happens, and there are long periods of Agathe just listening to other people's conversations, some of which are pretty obtuse. I did enjoy the surreal, fevered atmosphere that ramps up the further through the book we get, and the sub-plot involving Agathe's dysfunctional relationship with her parents. But I came away wondering what the whole point was. A strange one, that I likely will be pondering on for a while.

[Eleanor Dunn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really wanted to love The Vivisectors, having much enjoyed the deranged, unsparing world of The Doloriad. Unfortunately, though, this meandering novel fell flat for me. I found the prose so suffocating and strained that it impeded readability or any real sense of substance; Williams seems to cram so much mood, thought and imagery into each page that nothing is given space to carry real weight.

The Vivisectors is also, in my view, a victim of the “tell, don’t show” approach; I couldn’t connect with the narrator, Agathe, in the slightest. Her inner world is so explicit that she ironically comes to feel almost inhuman — though perhaps this is fitting, as she believes there is a “big dead rock” in her soul.

A sad miss for me, though I’m very grateful to Farrar, Straus and Giroux for the advanced copy.