The Life of the Mind

<p><strong>***A TIME MAGAZINE LITHUB WHITE REVIEW BEST BOOK OF 2021***</strong></p> <p><strong >200 pages of serious entertainment. &#8213;<em>The Times</em></strong></p> <p><em>The Life of the Mind</em> opens with Dorothy sitting on a library toilet checking her phone and examining the &#147;thick curdled knots of string&#148; coming out of her body. No one but her boyfriend knows that she&#146;s had a miscarriage not even her therapists&#150;Dorothy has two of them.</p> <p>An adjunct professor of English in New York City with no hope of finding a permanent position Dorothy&#146;s stuck unable to envision the future or cut ties with the past. &#147;What did you call it&#148; she asks herself &#147;when a life stopped developing but it didn&#146;t end?&#148;</p> <p>Christine Smallwood&#146;s debut is a campus novel like no other. Piercingly intelligent and darkly hilarious it moves from a classroom to an underwater puppet show from a conference in Las Vegas to a karaoke party. It is a discomforting glimpse into the head of a brilliant woman on the edge it 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.</p>