Name: Jan's review of The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood
Item: The Life of the Mind
Rating: 4
Author: Jan

Christine Smallwood

“The glorious love child of Otessa Moshfegh and Sally Rooney.” Six days ago, Dorothy had a miscarriage. At the novel’s opening, she is examining the “thick, curdled knots of string” that are still coming out of her body. Her doctor had told her that the bleeding would stop in a few days, but it hasn’t. She considers the miscarriage as ‘less than a trauma and more than an inconvenience.’ Like everything that happens to Dorothy, she observes the events of her life with detached interest. 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. Christine Smallwood’s stunning novel inhabits the abyss between what we think about and what we actually do.

The Life of the Mind

david

A witty, intelligent story of an American woman on the edge, by a brilliant new voice in fiction "Christine Smallwood's debut novel is that rare thing: an intellectual page-turner that commands one's attention completely from the first sentence to the final line."--Andrew Martin, author of Early Work and Cool for America 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.

A Novel

At first I was surprised to see so many negative reviews for this book, but having read it now I can see why some people might be put off by it. Firstly, it doesn't offer much in terms of plot. In fact, most of the action takes place outside of the narrated time. We begin post rem, learn a lot about past events, are even encouraged to anticipate future events, but the few weeks covered in the story are remarkably uneventful. Secondly, and not coincidentally, the text is deeply introspective, emotional, and it paints a gloomy picture of our (pre-)apocalyptic world. It made me laugh out loud more than once but much of its humor stems from the absurd contrast between the protagonist's resigned levity and her lostness in an indifferent world. But that's also where the story's magic lies. Smallwood manages to turn familiar mundane moments into relevant, poignant observations on life in the 21st century—on fear, privilege, guilt, resignation, powerlessness, acceptance, and even hope. What the story lacks in amusement it more than makes up for in hyper-examined introspection. Yes, there are a lot of stories about academics with low self-esteem, but rarely do they hit as close to home as this one. If that's your jam, you're gonna love it. 

Stacey Rainey 

** spoiler alert **
           Really not my favorite. Ancillary characters and so much discussion about periods, miscarriages, blood, abortion that also felt unconnected. Dorothy was reasonably likeable, but what really happened? I don't think spending more time in my mind is the answer...

Katie Chua

i have very strong feelings from this book; namely because it's exposing all the worst things about choosing "a life of the mind" aka entering grad school and becoming an academic. 

felt called out when they talked about lauren berlant's "cruel optimism" or basically the ridiculousness and extreme specificity that comes with academic papers and research in general. 

also a lot about motherhood which always makes me feel some type of way. i thought this book was smart but annoying, but like it was meant to be annoying, so i guess that makes it smart.

Jenna

Thanks to @hogarthbooks for sending me The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately I did not love it. I honestly don’t know why I finished it. I think because I’ve been picking up and then never picking back up lots of books recently, and I just wanted to finish a book.

This book follows Dorothy after she has a miscarriage, as she goes about her days as an adjunct professor of English. What didn’t work for me is that the life of Dorothy’s mind seemed to constantly be trying to hard to make quippy little funny observations, that just filled the pages, but then nothing really happened in the book. I’m down with a book where nothing happens but give me SOME small modicum of plot or character growth or an epiphany or even just something interesting to say... this book kind of felt... pointless?

This book got a great review in the New York Times this morning, so maybe I just don’t get it. The review says that Smallwood is a shrewd cultural critic. I mean, maybe? I felt like Dorothy’s character was bitter that she was stuck as an adjunct professor and jealous of her more successful peers. I don’t mind a character like this, but it didn’t work for me here. I think because... I was bored the whole time? I don’t know. I’m rambling. The NYT review also says this book has great prose. My feeling the whole time was “this book is trying too hard to have something interesting to say.” I thought the prose was nothing special. The NYT review compared Smallwood to Elif Batuman but to me this book feels like imitation Batuman, never living up to actual Batuman. (I love Elif Batuman.)

I’m being harsh but I’m trying to explain why I didn’t like it, and I’m doing a bad job! It’s hard to pinpoint. Just wasn’t for me. But might be for you!

david &
The Life of the Mind by Christine Smallwood

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