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The Life of the Mind
"[A] jewel of a debut . . . abundantly satisfying."--Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker
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)
As an adjunct professor of English in New York City with no 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 even her therapists--Dorothy has two of them. Nor can she bring herself to tell the other women in her life: her friends, her doctor, her mentor, her mother. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure?
Piercingly intelligent and darkly funny, The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of professional aspiration, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies. And yet Dorothy's mind is all she has to make sense of a world largely out of her control, one where disaster looms and is already here, where things happen but there is no plot. There is meaning, however, if Dorothy figures out where to look, and as the weeks pass and the bleeding subsides, she finds it in the most unlikely places, from a Las Vegas poolside to a living room karaoke session. In literature--as Dorothy well knows--stories end. But life, as they say, goes on.
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)
As an adjunct professor of English in New York City with no 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 even her therapists--Dorothy has two of them. Nor can she bring herself to tell the other women in her life: her friends, her doctor, her mentor, her mother. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure?
Piercingly intelligent and darkly funny, The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of professional aspiration, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies. And yet Dorothy's mind is all she has to make sense of a world largely out of her control, one where disaster looms and is already here, where things happen but there is no plot. There is meaning, however, if Dorothy figures out where to look, and as the weeks pass and the bleeding subsides, she finds it in the most unlikely places, from a Las Vegas poolside to a living room karaoke session. In literature--as Dorothy well knows--stories end. But life, as they say, goes on.
240 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 2021
330 people are currently reading
20991 people want to read
About the author
Christine Smallwood
4 books134 followersChristine Smallwood is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine and a contributing editor at Harper's Magazine. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, n+1, Vice, The New Yorker, Bookforum, T, and many other magazines. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University. The Life of the Mind is her first novel.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 549 reviews
March 11, 2021
I underlined parts of this book like they were a textbook, or a warning. A great book, but also everyone I told about this book grimaced, because my mid-reading review went something like this:
Me, a depressed English instructor with complicated feelings about belonging and academia: I’m really enjoying this book but it’s also about a depressed English instructor with complicated feelings about belonging and academia...
Them: grimace
Anyway it’s a book I enjoyed grimacing over. It felt like an anxiety attack in slow motion, which is honestly masterful. But that just might be for me, personally.
Me, a depressed English instructor with complicated feelings about belonging and academia: I’m really enjoying this book but it’s also about a depressed English instructor with complicated feelings about belonging and academia...
Them: grimace
Anyway it’s a book I enjoyed grimacing over. It felt like an anxiety attack in slow motion, which is honestly masterful. But that just might be for me, personally.
February 18, 2021
There's dismal and then there's The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood. I received a free eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for the promise of an honest review, so here we go.
Dorothy's life doesn't have direction. She's an adjunct professor, but she knows she's not a front runner for a permanent position at her university or any others. She recently had a miscarriage, but nobody other than her boyfriend even knew she was pregnant. She has plenty of women in her life, but she remains in a state of constant isolation. In this third-person narrative tale, the reader tags along with Dorothy as she attends an underwater puppet show with her mother and her mother's surrogate daughter, a conference in Las Vegas, and a party thrown by her best friend.
This book was tough to get through. Not only because of the surprisingly graphic descriptions of the blood in Dorothy's underwear, but also because Dorothy is tiresome. I'm not sure if I was supposed to love Dorothy or hate her. If disliking her was the goal, congrats Smallwood. Listen, I completely understand that we all handle life differently, but Dorothy's constant inability to take responsibility for her failures is unreal. No, nobody has control over a miscarriage and, trust me, I'm empathetic to that, but Dorothy's miscarriage sets off a spiral that isn't even worthy of being called a spiral. I would have respected the character more if she had continuously made poor decisions and eventually hit rock bottom, but Dorothy isn't even worthy of rock bottom. She's going to stay one step up from rock bottom for the rest of her mediocre life. Dorothy describes her actions as pedantic several times during the novel, so I think it's fitting to use the same word to describe Dorothy herself.
One reason I requested this book is because others described it as having dark humor. I love dark humor, but its occurrences are so few and far in between, that I wouldn't have even thought to bring it up if others hadn't. The first line of the book, "Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail", sets such a high bar, too. All in all, this book just wasn't for me.
Dorothy's life doesn't have direction. She's an adjunct professor, but she knows she's not a front runner for a permanent position at her university or any others. She recently had a miscarriage, but nobody other than her boyfriend even knew she was pregnant. She has plenty of women in her life, but she remains in a state of constant isolation. In this third-person narrative tale, the reader tags along with Dorothy as she attends an underwater puppet show with her mother and her mother's surrogate daughter, a conference in Las Vegas, and a party thrown by her best friend.
This book was tough to get through. Not only because of the surprisingly graphic descriptions of the blood in Dorothy's underwear, but also because Dorothy is tiresome. I'm not sure if I was supposed to love Dorothy or hate her. If disliking her was the goal, congrats Smallwood. Listen, I completely understand that we all handle life differently, but Dorothy's constant inability to take responsibility for her failures is unreal. No, nobody has control over a miscarriage and, trust me, I'm empathetic to that, but Dorothy's miscarriage sets off a spiral that isn't even worthy of being called a spiral. I would have respected the character more if she had continuously made poor decisions and eventually hit rock bottom, but Dorothy isn't even worthy of rock bottom. She's going to stay one step up from rock bottom for the rest of her mediocre life. Dorothy describes her actions as pedantic several times during the novel, so I think it's fitting to use the same word to describe Dorothy herself.
One reason I requested this book is because others described it as having dark humor. I love dark humor, but its occurrences are so few and far in between, that I wouldn't have even thought to bring it up if others hadn't. The first line of the book, "Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail", sets such a high bar, too. All in all, this book just wasn't for me.
March 29, 2021
Have you ever read a book during which nothing actually happens? Like, zero plot points? I have got to stop tricking myself into believing that I will enjoy introspective, character-driven stories. This is the *third* book I’ve read this year in which a thirty-something woman in academia is going through an existential crisis - this one just happened to also constantly discuss vaginal bleeding and honestly, I’m over it. Sometimes book like this make me go, “Am I just not smart enough to enjoy this level of intellectual meandering?” And then I decide no, I’m plenty smart, this story is just trying really hard to be cerebral and it’s not working.
January 12, 2022
Christine Smallwood’s compelling first novel’s centred on Dorothy who exists in a state of “comfortable precarity,” trapped in, what she calls “the twisted metal catastrophe of real life.” Dorothy’s an instantly recognisable character, the kind you might find in the pages of a book by Ottessa Moshfegh, Jenny Offill or Sheila Heti: young but not that young, smart but obsessive, weighed down by anxiety. A part-time, literature professor, at a time when universities are just another casualty in a long list of crumbling institutions, Dorothy teaches a course on the apocalyptic. The topic's indicative of her state of mind and her preoccupations with what’s happening in the wider world. But an unexpected failed pregnancy, and a medical miscarriage, confronts Dorothy with her bodily self, and her time’s suddenly taken up with assessing the bloody fall-out.
From the nod to Hannah Arendt in its title onwards, The Life of the Mind’s a highly referential, self-consciously literary piece: passages draw directly on Kafka, Thomas Mann and even Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca; the spirit of Baudrillard haunts the depiction of a trip to an academic conference in Vegas. Everything’s seen from Dorothy’s perspective and Dorothy can only think in literary terms. But at the same time Dorothy’s conscious of the absurdity of her profession: her rival Alexandra’s a rising star in academic circles because of her theories on the politics of doors in the Victorian novel, her phenomenally successful, former supervisor Judith – a possible stand-in for Judith Butler – is a manipulative, attention-seeker who encourages her students to compete for crumbs of approval.
Smallwood’s narrative’s brief but dense yet, despite its explicit intertextuality, relatable and accessible. It’s a little overwritten at times and some sections, like a Karaoke sequence at a party, fall flat but for the most part it’s extremely funny, infused with a kind of biting wit. Using the aftermath of a miscarriage as a way to structure Dorothy’s story’s unusual but surprisingly effective, and it’s a fitting metaphor for Dorothy’s life experiences, her stalled career, her abandoned attempts at writing. Although Smallwood’s book’s not quite as rich or varied as similar work I’ve read, it’s a very promising, intelligent debut and I look forward to reading more of her fiction in the future.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Europa Editions for an arc
From the nod to Hannah Arendt in its title onwards, The Life of the Mind’s a highly referential, self-consciously literary piece: passages draw directly on Kafka, Thomas Mann and even Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca; the spirit of Baudrillard haunts the depiction of a trip to an academic conference in Vegas. Everything’s seen from Dorothy’s perspective and Dorothy can only think in literary terms. But at the same time Dorothy’s conscious of the absurdity of her profession: her rival Alexandra’s a rising star in academic circles because of her theories on the politics of doors in the Victorian novel, her phenomenally successful, former supervisor Judith – a possible stand-in for Judith Butler – is a manipulative, attention-seeker who encourages her students to compete for crumbs of approval.
Smallwood’s narrative’s brief but dense yet, despite its explicit intertextuality, relatable and accessible. It’s a little overwritten at times and some sections, like a Karaoke sequence at a party, fall flat but for the most part it’s extremely funny, infused with a kind of biting wit. Using the aftermath of a miscarriage as a way to structure Dorothy’s story’s unusual but surprisingly effective, and it’s a fitting metaphor for Dorothy’s life experiences, her stalled career, her abandoned attempts at writing. Although Smallwood’s book’s not quite as rich or varied as similar work I’ve read, it’s a very promising, intelligent debut and I look forward to reading more of her fiction in the future.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Europa Editions for an arc
March 13, 2021
A solid entry into the Woman In Academia Feels Directionless In New York And In Life Overall genre. Smallwood is very brainy writer although she has a stable of $2 words she reuses. The subject matter-the tiny apocalypse of pregnancy loss taking place secretly in an unfeeling world- is compelling and needed. Moments of absurd levity elevate it beyond being a sad slog.
July 7, 2021
a book that did not make me feel seen so much as seen through — especially in Dorothy's tendency to catastrophise, theorise, over-ascribe meaning to the mundane, and generally evade life by abstracting around it — much like the passage in her paper that does "not ultimately resolve the meaning of anything, but indicated, by certain very long digressions about the Eucharist, baking, nineteenth-century discourses of the digestive tract, and the cholera epidemic, that the meaning, forever deferred and desirable, was profound."
so much of how she moves through world revolves not only around an academic "life of the mind", but a life staged and parsed within the mind. Dorothy regards sheepskin and wonders, "as a display of power it was gratuitous; no one doubted that the sheep were not in charge. Then again, what was the substitute? A synthetic that did not biodegrade? Was sustainability barbarism?" her thought process is at once painful and comic and deeply familiar. I would say this a sign that I need to see a therapist, but the novel skewers — with depressing and devastating acuity — the false promise of contemporary self-help culture.
this is a realisation that Dorothy herself seems to arrive at, almost, when she realises that her (second) therapists' podcast is nothing more than the unprofound, artless documentation of "an ordinary suffering interiority with no expectation of event or transformation and the barest glimmer of insight." as she herself reminds her students, the apocalypse is long overdue for re-imagination. if anything, the fixity of a set Judgment Day offered reassurance, but these days the end of the world could more accurately be described as a series of imminent, contingent tragedies stretching from now toward infinity. so when Dorothy make reference to the 'adjunct hell' she finds herself trapped in, the fact that "hell was not something waiting at the end of life but something that could open its maw at any moment, pull you in, and devour you whole" drives home the cruel precarity of The Academy, so to speak .
nevertheless! having emerged initially being convinced that intellectual clarity is a meaningless and nonexistent ideal, I now look back and realise that the novel's hyper-specific joys and agonies would make no sense divorced from the pursuit of that perfect clarity of insight. so maybe I am seen; not vindicated, but at least validated? of course, that's all just therapist talk.
so much of how she moves through world revolves not only around an academic "life of the mind", but a life staged and parsed within the mind. Dorothy regards sheepskin and wonders, "as a display of power it was gratuitous; no one doubted that the sheep were not in charge. Then again, what was the substitute? A synthetic that did not biodegrade? Was sustainability barbarism?" her thought process is at once painful and comic and deeply familiar. I would say this a sign that I need to see a therapist, but the novel skewers — with depressing and devastating acuity — the false promise of contemporary self-help culture.
this is a realisation that Dorothy herself seems to arrive at, almost, when she realises that her (second) therapists' podcast is nothing more than the unprofound, artless documentation of "an ordinary suffering interiority with no expectation of event or transformation and the barest glimmer of insight." as she herself reminds her students, the apocalypse is long overdue for re-imagination. if anything, the fixity of a set Judgment Day offered reassurance, but these days the end of the world could more accurately be described as a series of imminent, contingent tragedies stretching from now toward infinity. so when Dorothy make reference to the 'adjunct hell' she finds herself trapped in, the fact that "hell was not something waiting at the end of life but something that could open its maw at any moment, pull you in, and devour you whole" drives home the cruel precarity of The Academy, so to speak .
nevertheless! having emerged initially being convinced that intellectual clarity is a meaningless and nonexistent ideal, I now look back and realise that the novel's hyper-specific joys and agonies would make no sense divorced from the pursuit of that perfect clarity of insight. so maybe I am seen; not vindicated, but at least validated? of course, that's all just therapist talk.
October 20, 2021
This novel was blurbed as "the glorious love child of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney" (Publishers Weekly, starred review), so I was really looking forward to reading this. But it's hard to live up to expectations and even though I can see Smallwood was trying very hard, I don't think she succeeded. It didn't have the wit of Moshfegh, nor the depth of thought of Rooney. The main character Dorothy also isn't a very likable person. Not that a book needs to have a sympathetic character in order for it to be good, but Dorothy has just had a miscarriage, is having sort of an existential crisis, you know all about her bodily functions and about the blood in her underwear and still I don't care for her. Does that make me a terrible person? Or is there something wrong with the book? You tell me.
I will probably read Smallwood's next novel though, as there is talent hidden underneath it all.
If only the novel could have been more like its brilliant first line:
"Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail."
Thank you Europe Editions and Netgalley for the ARC.
I will probably read Smallwood's next novel though, as there is talent hidden underneath it all.
If only the novel could have been more like its brilliant first line:
"Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail."
Thank you Europe Editions and Netgalley for the ARC.
March 29, 2021
I'm kinda obsessed with this book and the absolute audacity it has to distill what's terrible about 21st century living into a slim, 229-paged novel. This book needs a warning label on the cover that says "DO NOT READ THIS IF YOU FEEL LIKE THE PLANET IS ONE BIG BALL OF TRASH THAT'S BEEN DROPPED INTO A BUCKET OF GASOLINE AND SET ON FIRE". Needless to say, I love this book! No actually, I really love this book!
Dorothy is feeling aimless these days. She's an adjunct professor living in New York, offsetting the fear of never escaping "adjunct hell" by seeing two therapists, one to helps Dorothy work through her problems in life and the other to work through her problems that result from her first therapist's attempts to work through her problems in life. Oh, and she's just suffered a miscarriage. And, to be perfectly honest, that's about all that happens in the novel. Sure there's a work trip to Las Vegas that occurs about halfway through, as well as a perfectly detailed dinner party that devolves (or evolves, depending on how fun you are) into a drunken karaoke night, but the real magic of The Life of the Mind is the writing. And damn, can Christine Smallwood write a sentence. She takes the smallest, most innocuous moments and turns them into high-minded reflections on life and art. In one standout passage, Dorothy encounters a homeless man on the subway who she compares, in a brilliantly pretentious manner, to the Mariner in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (never read, probably never will). It's Christine Smallwood's uncanny ability to slightly recalculate life, to take an average moment (a trip on the subway, a work conference, an ultrasound) and make it seem unfamiliar, almost ridiculous. It's the same type of destabilization that the Strange Planet comics perform, only Dorothy is way more cynical, way more disenfranchised, and way, way funnier.
Dorothy is feeling aimless these days. She's an adjunct professor living in New York, offsetting the fear of never escaping "adjunct hell" by seeing two therapists, one to helps Dorothy work through her problems in life and the other to work through her problems that result from her first therapist's attempts to work through her problems in life. Oh, and she's just suffered a miscarriage. And, to be perfectly honest, that's about all that happens in the novel. Sure there's a work trip to Las Vegas that occurs about halfway through, as well as a perfectly detailed dinner party that devolves (or evolves, depending on how fun you are) into a drunken karaoke night, but the real magic of The Life of the Mind is the writing. And damn, can Christine Smallwood write a sentence. She takes the smallest, most innocuous moments and turns them into high-minded reflections on life and art. In one standout passage, Dorothy encounters a homeless man on the subway who she compares, in a brilliantly pretentious manner, to the Mariner in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" (never read, probably never will). It's Christine Smallwood's uncanny ability to slightly recalculate life, to take an average moment (a trip on the subway, a work conference, an ultrasound) and make it seem unfamiliar, almost ridiculous. It's the same type of destabilization that the Strange Planet comics perform, only Dorothy is way more cynical, way more disenfranchised, and way, way funnier.
March 27, 2021
Page 59 sums it up, “For the record, Dorothy, I find you sympathetic,” the therapist said. “But listeners..” and I am here to tell you, readers will feel the same way. The only decent character is Rog and Dorothy routinely craps on him. I don’t need to read about bloody tampons, pads and fetal tissue when it’s in a story that goes no where.
I won this book in a Goodreads give away.
I won this book in a Goodreads give away.
January 6, 2023
i was so bored the entire time i'm reading this
November 6, 2021
Thank you so much to tandemcollectiveuk and europaeditionsuk for letting me tag along to the Ad-Pr-Gifted Book Tour woooooo.
Trigger warning: miscarriage, abortion, depression
Ok so honestly this book looks like it’s giving Bridget Jones mixed with 2020 blues but in reality it’s giving Kendall Jenner holds up a coke can and is surprised racism didn’t end.
Literally nothing happened. Nothing. I get the narrative style that means we see only through the reflections in the protagonists perception of events but I wanted to pull my hair out or just leave the book on the train.
I fear this is where society is heading, glorifying struggle. Dorothy miscarried, lied to her therapists, was enabled by everyone and left to rot on the side of the road (figuratively speaking). Then we wonder why people suffer and don’t speak up, but every time she tried no one cared. So she went off and did some really weird things with her period blood because she needed something, anything to make her FEEL.
This book is frustrating, insufferable and basically not okay. I’m gutted because I’ll probably never be invited to another readalong (boo) but equally I can’t promote a book I think is fundamentally problematic ~le cry~
Trigger warning: miscarriage, abortion, depression
Ok so honestly this book looks like it’s giving Bridget Jones mixed with 2020 blues but in reality it’s giving Kendall Jenner holds up a coke can and is surprised racism didn’t end.
Literally nothing happened. Nothing. I get the narrative style that means we see only through the reflections in the protagonists perception of events but I wanted to pull my hair out or just leave the book on the train.
I fear this is where society is heading, glorifying struggle. Dorothy miscarried, lied to her therapists, was enabled by everyone and left to rot on the side of the road (figuratively speaking). Then we wonder why people suffer and don’t speak up, but every time she tried no one cared. So she went off and did some really weird things with her period blood because she needed something, anything to make her FEEL.
This book is frustrating, insufferable and basically not okay. I’m gutted because I’ll probably never be invited to another readalong (boo) but equally I can’t promote a book I think is fundamentally problematic ~le cry~
September 28, 2021
"Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail"
From the opening line (and if you recoil at that, this won't be a book for you) Smallwood lays bare her intentions: this is a book which is smart and upfront about the way life is experienced through both mind and body. Dorothy is an adjunct literature professor in a private US college (what in the UK we term a postgrad sessional lecturer, usually paid by the hour, with a timetable that shifts term to term and with no security or firm basis for building an academic career or, indeed, life). She's one of those disaffected women of contemporary fiction (she's in the 30s, rather than 20s, but may be younger in life/career terms due to grad school/PhD) who is dissatisfied with everything: her relationship with her live-in boyfriend is lukewarm, her friends are either academically successful and out of reach or struggling with motherhood, her career teaching a course on apocalypse literature is going nowhere and her own writing is ending up consistently deleted. On top of this, Dorothy is dealing with an induced miscarriage and all the ways that her body is asserting itself insistently: blood and bleeding punctuates the text, a reminder of the kind of (female) corporeality which has conventionally been written out of literature.
I liked the smartness of the thinking behind this book as it uses academic theory and literature to carry its engagement. Also the fine irony of that title as it satirises the realities for so many young academics where 'the life of the mind' is actually a constant juggling of multiple jobs, including minimum wage positions, just to pay the rent while holding out hope of a permanent position. On top of that, the books adds a feminist perspective that centralises the fact of female bodies. Names appear important: Dorothy reminded my of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimages with its detached interiority, and Judith made me think of Judith Butler, one of the leading theorists of the body.
For all the good stuff, this is a book which slightly outstays its welcome as it doesn't have much narrative energy or drive - the meandering telling hits lots of contemporary touchstones around work, pregnancy, the medical treatment of female bodies, miscarriage/abortion, mental health, career expectations and the reality, mediocre relationships so it's perhaps less fresh than it could be. All the same, I like the smartness of the vision and the refusal to be coy about bodily functions in all their messy materiality.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
From the opening line (and if you recoil at that, this won't be a book for you) Smallwood lays bare her intentions: this is a book which is smart and upfront about the way life is experienced through both mind and body. Dorothy is an adjunct literature professor in a private US college (what in the UK we term a postgrad sessional lecturer, usually paid by the hour, with a timetable that shifts term to term and with no security or firm basis for building an academic career or, indeed, life). She's one of those disaffected women of contemporary fiction (she's in the 30s, rather than 20s, but may be younger in life/career terms due to grad school/PhD) who is dissatisfied with everything: her relationship with her live-in boyfriend is lukewarm, her friends are either academically successful and out of reach or struggling with motherhood, her career teaching a course on apocalypse literature is going nowhere and her own writing is ending up consistently deleted. On top of this, Dorothy is dealing with an induced miscarriage and all the ways that her body is asserting itself insistently: blood and bleeding punctuates the text, a reminder of the kind of (female) corporeality which has conventionally been written out of literature.
I liked the smartness of the thinking behind this book as it uses academic theory and literature to carry its engagement. Also the fine irony of that title as it satirises the realities for so many young academics where 'the life of the mind' is actually a constant juggling of multiple jobs, including minimum wage positions, just to pay the rent while holding out hope of a permanent position. On top of that, the books adds a feminist perspective that centralises the fact of female bodies. Names appear important: Dorothy reminded my of Dorothy Richardson's Pilgrimages with its detached interiority, and Judith made me think of Judith Butler, one of the leading theorists of the body.
For all the good stuff, this is a book which slightly outstays its welcome as it doesn't have much narrative energy or drive - the meandering telling hits lots of contemporary touchstones around work, pregnancy, the medical treatment of female bodies, miscarriage/abortion, mental health, career expectations and the reality, mediocre relationships so it's perhaps less fresh than it could be. All the same, I like the smartness of the vision and the refusal to be coy about bodily functions in all their messy materiality.
Thanks to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley
April 30, 2021
The Life of the Mind might have been more accurately called The Life of the Uterus because that is the locus of the action in this book. It is particularly focused on the events in the uterus of the protagonist who has suffered a miscarriage and been treated with the drug that induces medical abortions in order to clear the uterus of the debris from the miscarriage. She was told to expect bleeding for about ten days, but she is still experiencing the after-effects weeks later. Then later her best friend decides to have an abortion. So, yes, uteruses rule in this tale.
But perhaps I am being unfair because the protagonist, Dorothy, also thinks a lot so her mind is engaged. She thinks a lot about the miscarriage although she doesn't particularly grieve about it. Mostly she thinks about it because she hasn't told anyone except her partner. She has withheld the information from her best friend, the one who later decides to have an abortion. And she has withheld the information from her therapists, both her first therapist and the second one that she sees to complain about the first one. Second-guessing her actions seems to be second nature with Dorothy. She can't seem to make a decision without reviewing, rethinking, and replaying it in her mind.
Dorothy is an adjunct professor at a private university where she teaches two to four courses per semester including one course called Writing Apocalypse. Her students are encouraged to write about an apocalypse to come. The context for the course seems to be global anxiety perhaps in regard to the environmental crisis or a political crisis or maybe both. It isn't altogether clear. But Dorothy herself seems less concerned with any of that than she is with what she terms "disappointed cynicism, hatred of groups and existential damage that manifests as useless contrarianism and resignation." Her mind focuses on this and her thoughts swirl endlessly and claustrophobically around this center.
As for the novel's plot, there really isn't much of one. The writing is incisive and it moves along at a fair clip, but nothing much happens and there doesn't seem to be any defining moment of truth or crux to it all. Indeed, at one detour point in the narrative, Dorothy goes to an academic conference in Las Vegas. Why? There doesn't seem to be any particular reason for it and it doesn't reveal anything new to the reader. It's just a distraction.
Moreover, a considerable portion of the narrative is spent describing scatological matters and Dorothy's hygiene, or lack of same. The first sentence of the book finds her sitting in a public toilet and musing over the fact that she is still bleeding from her miscarriage after six days. And that sort of sets the tone for what is to follow. Again, why this emphasis? Perhaps the writer did it for its shock value, but it's all a bit disgusting and I couldn't really see that it served any great purpose.
Disaffected and dissatisfied seem to best describe Dorothy. She leads a rather bleak life but it was hard for me to work up much empathy for her, in spite of the fact that we share a name. Smallwood's writing is fairly stream-of-consciousness in style and the story is undeniably creative, unique even. But I do like books to have a point to them and this one just didn't seem to. Then, again, maybe pointlessness was the point.
But perhaps I am being unfair because the protagonist, Dorothy, also thinks a lot so her mind is engaged. She thinks a lot about the miscarriage although she doesn't particularly grieve about it. Mostly she thinks about it because she hasn't told anyone except her partner. She has withheld the information from her best friend, the one who later decides to have an abortion. And she has withheld the information from her therapists, both her first therapist and the second one that she sees to complain about the first one. Second-guessing her actions seems to be second nature with Dorothy. She can't seem to make a decision without reviewing, rethinking, and replaying it in her mind.
Dorothy is an adjunct professor at a private university where she teaches two to four courses per semester including one course called Writing Apocalypse. Her students are encouraged to write about an apocalypse to come. The context for the course seems to be global anxiety perhaps in regard to the environmental crisis or a political crisis or maybe both. It isn't altogether clear. But Dorothy herself seems less concerned with any of that than she is with what she terms "disappointed cynicism, hatred of groups and existential damage that manifests as useless contrarianism and resignation." Her mind focuses on this and her thoughts swirl endlessly and claustrophobically around this center.
As for the novel's plot, there really isn't much of one. The writing is incisive and it moves along at a fair clip, but nothing much happens and there doesn't seem to be any defining moment of truth or crux to it all. Indeed, at one detour point in the narrative, Dorothy goes to an academic conference in Las Vegas. Why? There doesn't seem to be any particular reason for it and it doesn't reveal anything new to the reader. It's just a distraction.
Moreover, a considerable portion of the narrative is spent describing scatological matters and Dorothy's hygiene, or lack of same. The first sentence of the book finds her sitting in a public toilet and musing over the fact that she is still bleeding from her miscarriage after six days. And that sort of sets the tone for what is to follow. Again, why this emphasis? Perhaps the writer did it for its shock value, but it's all a bit disgusting and I couldn't really see that it served any great purpose.
Disaffected and dissatisfied seem to best describe Dorothy. She leads a rather bleak life but it was hard for me to work up much empathy for her, in spite of the fact that we share a name. Smallwood's writing is fairly stream-of-consciousness in style and the story is undeniably creative, unique even. But I do like books to have a point to them and this one just didn't seem to. Then, again, maybe pointlessness was the point.
August 19, 2021
Calling this "the glorious love child of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney" is honestly offensive to both of those brilliant authors. This book is mostly insufferable. There have been a lot of these lately- books about dissatisfied women who are unhappy with/feel suffocated by their lives but struggle to make the necessary changes to create the life that they do want to be living. I am all for those books, interested in introspective narratives, and am fine with books where there is not a great deal of plot, so long as the characters are rich, detailed, and emotionally complex. This book has none of those things. The third-person omniscient narrator of Dorothy, the main character, gives us every minute, disgusting, and mundane detail of Dorthy's life, but fails to give us anything that would allow us to truly connect or identify with Dorothy, other than the fact that all of our lives involve some level of mundanity. I sort of appreciated the articulation of the mundanity in the sense that reading about the mundane things that Dorothy does (check her email incessantly, open an article and read half of it, procrastinate, etc) made me take a closer look at my own terrible avoidant habits and want to work a bit harder to break them. However, we don’t really get to know Dorothy on any intimate, emotional level, and as such, she is rendered petty and flat in affect. Petty and flat affect can sometimes make for an interesting or even funny tertiary character, but for the main character, it just made for a dead boring book. To sum it up, I don't mind the structure of this book, but it gave me nothing funny, thoughtful, or emotional to grab onto. It was boring.
April 26, 2021
As my ocular arrays surveyed the lines before me, fantasizing that these globular organs were engaging in acts of prestidigitation, I suddenly felt encroached upon by a wave of increasing inanition that suppressed any possibility of immediate muscular rejuvenation.If you prefer the first of my two self-fashioned epigraphs, then The Life of the Mind may be for you. After all, given that the novel's title references the intellect, why not adopt a prose style that magnifies it whenever possible? Well, there's a perfectly good answer to that question. When prose becomes, not a vehicle for storytelling, but an acrobatic and showy end in itself, the reader's attention is forced to a meta-level, automatically redirected from events to their descriptions. That's what happens when academic pretentiousness trickles down into popular fiction, but not, apparently, as a parody. And Christine Smallwood's novel is chock-full of this. Here's just one example (you can do the translation this time):
As I scanned the page, thinking that my eyes might be tricking me, I suddenly became so tired that I was barely able to move.
"I was reading the news earlier," Dorothy said, which was true -- rather than attend any afternoon panels Dorothy had spent the hours since leaving the Palazzo reading her phone and sleeping off the piña coladas -- but she also hoped, by this reference to the unceasing rampage of current events, to explain any idiosyncratic or personal anxiety as the product of sincere sorrow at the looming extinction of the human race and to introduce a conversational thread that would lead them away from the morass of academic competition and toward something safe and neutral: the plight of humanity. [page 153]Ironically, The Life of the Mind is much less about the mind than the body. Dorothy, the protagonist, has just suffered a miscarriage, and we are treated to numerous accounts of substances that her vagina exudes -- what they look like, feel like, smell like, taste like. Meanwhile, Dorothy's stymied career as an adjunct professor of English, which might have made for an interesting tale, is instead pretty much relegated to the background. Actually, there's no tale at all here -- just a series of vignettes that don't add up to much of anything, not even a satisfying characterization of Dorothy. The novel's first line -- "Dorothy was taking a shit at the library when her therapist called and she let it go to voicemail" -- holds promise, but it's all downhill after that.
March 21, 2021
Timing is such a funny component when reading books and Christine Smallwood includes a great anecdote about the importance of sharing/reading books at the right time and how it can completely alter your experience: You could do so much damage, giving someone a book at the wrong time. You could prevent them from loving it, or-- and this could be worse--make them love it too much, or too stupidly. They might waste years of their lives because they read the wrong book at the right time, or the right book at the wrong time, or the wrong book at the wrong time.
The Life of the Mind was the right book at the eerily right time for me. This appropriately titled novel is primarily the inner workings of Dorothy's mind. She is an adjunct English professor and teaches a course about apocalypse in literature. One of Dorothy's constant, all-consuming dreads is the threat of climate change in comparison to the scarcity of opportunities for academics. I was constantly thinking Jenny Offill's Weather while reading this. Both novels discuss the impending doom by offering darkly funny hypotheticals, such as Dorothy's imaginary conversation with the children of the future floating on rafts made of coats for seasons that no longer exist (a favorite passage). The main plot of the story is Dorothy's miscarriage and chapters are titled marking the days after the event. Smallwood includes frank descriptions of the various types of bleeding the main character endures, which some readers may find gruesome, but I thought perfectly illustrated the oppression of the female body as it ages and attempts to create life.
I hesitated giving this five stars because it is not a perfect novel by any means. In fact, I really dislike the girlboss feminist energy of its ending, but I think Christine Smallwood did a hell of job with this debut.
most social interactions were matters of function and role. She was there but she was not there. Like the love of one's parents, or being someone's type, or being born into the generation destined to witness the end of the world, it wasn't personal.
If only there was some way to have the intimacy of telling without losing control over the story. That was the worst, when all your little pieces got scattered around.
to explain any idiosyncratic or personal anxiety as the product of sincere sorrow at the looming extinction of the human race (so resonant reflecting on how we respond to "how are you" one year into a global pandemic)
The Life of the Mind was the right book at the eerily right time for me. This appropriately titled novel is primarily the inner workings of Dorothy's mind. She is an adjunct English professor and teaches a course about apocalypse in literature. One of Dorothy's constant, all-consuming dreads is the threat of climate change in comparison to the scarcity of opportunities for academics. I was constantly thinking Jenny Offill's Weather while reading this. Both novels discuss the impending doom by offering darkly funny hypotheticals, such as Dorothy's imaginary conversation with the children of the future floating on rafts made of coats for seasons that no longer exist (a favorite passage). The main plot of the story is Dorothy's miscarriage and chapters are titled marking the days after the event. Smallwood includes frank descriptions of the various types of bleeding the main character endures, which some readers may find gruesome, but I thought perfectly illustrated the oppression of the female body as it ages and attempts to create life.
I hesitated giving this five stars because it is not a perfect novel by any means. In fact, I really dislike the girlboss feminist energy of its ending, but I think Christine Smallwood did a hell of job with this debut.
most social interactions were matters of function and role. She was there but she was not there. Like the love of one's parents, or being someone's type, or being born into the generation destined to witness the end of the world, it wasn't personal.
If only there was some way to have the intimacy of telling without losing control over the story. That was the worst, when all your little pieces got scattered around.
to explain any idiosyncratic or personal anxiety as the product of sincere sorrow at the looming extinction of the human race (so resonant reflecting on how we respond to "how are you" one year into a global pandemic)
September 20, 2022
The internal dialogue found in most novels is focused and succinct, clearly intending to guide the reader to a conclusion. What I loved about this novel is that the thoughts of the protagonist, Dorothy, are never conclusive. Dorothy's mind wanders and we, the readers, experience her daily life in the form of a fever dream. There is no plot, but the characterization felt so wonderfully accurate that the novel didn't need one to express how bonded humanity is in its detachment.
Although this novel isn't the most exciting read, Dorothy is fascinating. Being privy to her most candid ideas, perceptions, and thoughts gives her an endearing quality that is unmatched by most other protagonists found in plot-focused novels. I have grown so fond of Dorothy because I have been a spectator to some of her worst, weirdest, or wildest thoughts and have been able to identify with her. So many of her thoughts have, at some point in time, been my thoughts as well, although I considered them too bizarre to share with anyone else. Reading about the internal goings-on of Dorothy's mind normalized the strange that we feel forced to confront on our own. This book's allure is found in its examination of the mundane and its presentation of the isolated mind, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Although this novel isn't the most exciting read, Dorothy is fascinating. Being privy to her most candid ideas, perceptions, and thoughts gives her an endearing quality that is unmatched by most other protagonists found in plot-focused novels. I have grown so fond of Dorothy because I have been a spectator to some of her worst, weirdest, or wildest thoughts and have been able to identify with her. So many of her thoughts have, at some point in time, been my thoughts as well, although I considered them too bizarre to share with anyone else. Reading about the internal goings-on of Dorothy's mind normalized the strange that we feel forced to confront on our own. This book's allure is found in its examination of the mundane and its presentation of the isolated mind, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
February 20, 2025
finally got to this one after letting it sit on my TBR shelf forever! this was an incredibly quick read that i was entertained by while reading, but i’m not sure how much sticking power it’ll have as i get further away from the reading experience.
the life of the mind is exactly what the title sounds like - we are in the headspace of dorothy, an adjunct professor whose academic career is flailing. a lot of her thoughts and experiences center around the miscarriage that she recently had and is keeping a secret from almost everyone in her life. this is a classic woman on the edge, no plot just vibes book. reminiscent of practice by rosalind brown, especially the frankness with which the narrators talk about their bodily functions.
really enjoyed smallwood’s writing style and the way she blended humor with heavier topics. dorothy’s observations felt pretty poignant and relatable. it was a quick, incredibly readable book, but there just wasn’t much to hold onto and i fear i’ll forget it pretty quickly. waffling between a 3.5⭐️ or a 4⭐️
“What a strange and old-fashioned collective experience, she said, the idea that people could all die together in one heaven-bound moment; today you had to first watch other people, some of whom lived very far away and others of whom were technically neighbors, die online, and you couldn't save them, and all the while you could be next.”
the life of the mind is exactly what the title sounds like - we are in the headspace of dorothy, an adjunct professor whose academic career is flailing. a lot of her thoughts and experiences center around the miscarriage that she recently had and is keeping a secret from almost everyone in her life. this is a classic woman on the edge, no plot just vibes book. reminiscent of practice by rosalind brown, especially the frankness with which the narrators talk about their bodily functions.
really enjoyed smallwood’s writing style and the way she blended humor with heavier topics. dorothy’s observations felt pretty poignant and relatable. it was a quick, incredibly readable book, but there just wasn’t much to hold onto and i fear i’ll forget it pretty quickly. waffling between a 3.5⭐️ or a 4⭐️
“What a strange and old-fashioned collective experience, she said, the idea that people could all die together in one heaven-bound moment; today you had to first watch other people, some of whom lived very far away and others of whom were technically neighbors, die online, and you couldn't save them, and all the while you could be next.”
May 3, 2021
This book carroms between conversations the main character--a flailing academic who is undergoing the interminable mental and physical side effects of a miscarriage--has with other people in her life. Occasionally wry, mostly tedious. The main character seemed so superficial, and none of the drama the author foregrounds the novel with seems resolved by the abrupt ending.
May 14, 2023
See Lorrie Moore for a more acerbic and sympathetic portrayal of existential angst. Or maybe I'm just too old to appreciate the next generation's take on world weariness.
April 22, 2021
For my sins, I am currently the "Director of Graduate Studies" for an English Department at an R1 University. This means I am responsible for "advising" any number of soon-to-be and recent Ph.D.s who are enmired in the very same professional/existential crises as the narrator of this book. I have also had more miscarriages than I care to count. So maybe I'm not the right audience here, because this novel offered me no chance to stretch my consciousness beyond the confines of my day-to-day. All of that stipulated: it felt like reading some lightly-veiled version of my life narrated by a glum, dour, maybe pathologically dissociated malcontent. I'm glad it's over, and I just wish I didn't now have to sign onto a Zoom meeting with 45 more of her.
May 27, 2021
3.5 rounded up. Nearly the entirety of the narrative is an inner monologue. The protagonist is a sharply funny, insecure, introverted writer, plagued by a morose obsessive tendency to over think absolutely everything.
I wasn't sure that the style of the novel would hold my interest, and though my interest flagged a bit at the end, I found myself laughing more often than I expected. This is a smart debut by an author who takes on risk with an unusual storytelling format.
I wasn't sure that the style of the novel would hold my interest, and though my interest flagged a bit at the end, I found myself laughing more often than I expected. This is a smart debut by an author who takes on risk with an unusual storytelling format.
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September 13, 2021which frightens me more: being a working professional or an adult woman?
March 20, 2021
3 Stars
See more on my Bookstagram: Shelf.Inspiration Instagram
“She was too shallow to have an interior this deep. She felt like an observer of some other reality, looking not into a mirror but through a portal or at the page of an old illustrated book”. - The Life of the Mind.
A disaffected adjunct’s life is disrupted by a miscarriage, forcing her to reckon with her body, work, relationships, and sense of self. As an adjunct professor of English with no hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy feels like she is stuck and has no idea what else to do. No one but her boyfriend knows that she’s just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists. As the days go by and Dorothy continues to bleed, her sense of contingency grows. This novel is about endings: of youth, of professional aspiration, of possibility, and of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies.
Overall, this was an interesting book and was told in an almost stream-of-consciousness style. We follow Dorothy after she has a miscarriage and is dealing with the continued bleeding as she goes about her often unsatisfactory life. Seeing how she never feels a sense of closure, and how the stories of her life end and begin again as life continues to go on. While I love these kind of books because they are so character driven, I personally had a hard time connecting to Dorothy. There were some points of connection, but overall I felt distant. There were also some parts of the novel, choices that were made and things that were said, that didn’t sit right with me and my personal feelings. However, that is very subjective. The novel is definitely well-written, quite interesting, and unique. There are some content warnings around miscarriage and pregnancy to be aware of too. Overall, if you are interested in very character driven stories I would still recommend this if the synopsis sounds interesting to you.
See more on my Bookstagram: Shelf.Inspiration Instagram
“She was too shallow to have an interior this deep. She felt like an observer of some other reality, looking not into a mirror but through a portal or at the page of an old illustrated book”. - The Life of the Mind.
A disaffected adjunct’s life is disrupted by a miscarriage, forcing her to reckon with her body, work, relationships, and sense of self. As an adjunct professor of English with no hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy feels like she is stuck and has no idea what else to do. No one but her boyfriend knows that she’s just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists. As the days go by and Dorothy continues to bleed, her sense of contingency grows. This novel is about endings: of youth, of professional aspiration, of possibility, and of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies.
Overall, this was an interesting book and was told in an almost stream-of-consciousness style. We follow Dorothy after she has a miscarriage and is dealing with the continued bleeding as she goes about her often unsatisfactory life. Seeing how she never feels a sense of closure, and how the stories of her life end and begin again as life continues to go on. While I love these kind of books because they are so character driven, I personally had a hard time connecting to Dorothy. There were some points of connection, but overall I felt distant. There were also some parts of the novel, choices that were made and things that were said, that didn’t sit right with me and my personal feelings. However, that is very subjective. The novel is definitely well-written, quite interesting, and unique. There are some content warnings around miscarriage and pregnancy to be aware of too. Overall, if you are interested in very character driven stories I would still recommend this if the synopsis sounds interesting to you.
December 15, 2021
i really REALLY wish this would’ve been in first person perspective. i couldn’t fully connect with dorothy because of the narrative style. i liked the talk of shit and blood but it also talked way too much about the environment for me. this is a weird girl book but in a boring overly deep way.
February 27, 2022
The first time I tried to read this I thought it might be a DNF for me. I'm glad I gave it a second try. It's so many things that I struggle to capture it all in a review. It very much captures the hopelessness of the current moment and the discombobulating comfort and privilege in which that hopelessness dwells. It's messy modern feminism which is still very much mired in the life of the body. And to me, the depressed main character (but all women in their 40s are depressed now - or so their prescriptions say) is actually frequently hilarious.
March 24, 2021
8 year old i babysit: “what’s your book about?”
me: “it’s about a woman who’s a professor, and she’s unhappy with her life”
8 yro: “so what happens?”
me: “well, there’s not a ton that happens, mostly it’s about what she’s thinking and feeling while she lives her life”
8 yro: “the whole book is just thinking and feeling??!”
me: “it’s about a woman who’s a professor, and she’s unhappy with her life”
8 yro: “so what happens?”
me: “well, there’s not a ton that happens, mostly it’s about what she’s thinking and feeling while she lives her life”
8 yro: “the whole book is just thinking and feeling??!”
October 3, 2024
all vibes, no plot
November 6, 2024
if i could rate this any lower i would
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