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The life of the mind : a novel / Christine Smallwood.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: London ; New York : Hogarth, [2021]Edition: First editionDescription: 229 pages ; 22 cmContent type:
  • text
Media type:
  • unmediated
Carrier type:
  • volume
ISBN:
  • 9780593229897
  • 0593229894
Subject(s): Genre/Form: Summary: "As an adjunct professor of English with a draining and tedious courseload, Dorothy feels "like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had no idea what else to do but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise." No one but her partner knows that she's just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists--Dorothy being the kind of person who begins seeing a second because she's too conflict-averse to break things off with the first. It's not so much that Dorothy is ashamed of the miscarriage itself as she is of the sense of purpose the prospect of motherhood had provided, of how much she'd wanted it. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure? (That's another thing she's ashamed of.) The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of aspirations, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies. And yet our minds are all we have to make sense of a world largely out of our control--which is to say our world; a world where things happen, but there is no plot. And so Dorothy must make do with what she has, as the weeks pass and the bleeding subsides. Often witty and consistently alive to how stories end and begin again, The Life of the Mind is a moving, darkly funny, and starkly original examination of how life, as they say, goes on"-- Provided by publisher.
Fiction notes: Click to open in new window
Holdings
Item type Home library Collection Call number Materials specified Status Date due Barcode Item holds
Adult Book Adult Book Main Library Fiction SMALLWOO CHRISTIN Available 33111010486104
Total holds: 0

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time, NPR, The Atlantic, Electric Lit, Thrillist, LitHub, Kirkus Reviews * A witty, intelligent novel of an American woman on the edge, by a brilliant new voice in fiction--"the glorious love child of Ottessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney" ( Publishers Weekly, starred review)

"[A] jewel of a debut . . . abundantly satisfying."--Jia Tolentino, The New Yorker

As an adjunct professor of English in New York City with little hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy feels "like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had nowhere else to be but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise." No one but her boyfriend knows that she's just had a miscarriage--not her mother, her best friend, or her therapists (Dorothy has two of them). She wasn't even sure she wanted to be a mother. So why does Dorothy feel like a failure?

The Life of the Mind is a book about endings--of youth, of ambition, of possibility, but also of the meaning that an inquiring mind can find in the mess of daily experience. Mordant and remorselessly wise, this jewel of a debut cuts incisively into life as we live it, and how we think of it.

"As an adjunct professor of English with a draining and tedious courseload, Dorothy feels "like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had no idea what else to do but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise." No one but her partner knows that she's just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists--Dorothy being the kind of person who begins seeing a second because she's too conflict-averse to break things off with the first. It's not so much that Dorothy is ashamed of the miscarriage itself as she is of the sense of purpose the prospect of motherhood had provided, of how much she'd wanted it. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure? (That's another thing she's ashamed of.) The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of aspirations, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies. And yet our minds are all we have to make sense of a world largely out of our control--which is to say our world; a world where things happen, but there is no plot. And so Dorothy must make do with what she has, as the weeks pass and the bleeding subsides. Often witty and consistently alive to how stories end and begin again, The Life of the Mind is a moving, darkly funny, and starkly original examination of how life, as they say, goes on"-- Provided by publisher.

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