The Life of the MindChristine SmallwoodLabel: Europa Editions (UK) LtdDescription: ***A TIME MAGAZINE LITHUB WHITE REVIEW BEST BOOK OF 2021***200 pages of serious entertainment. ―The TimesThe Life of the Mind opens with Dorothy sitting on a library toilet checking her phone and examining the “thick curdled knots of string coming out of her body. No one but her boyfriend knows that she’s had a miscarriage not even her therapists–Dorothy has two of them.An adjunct professor of English in New York City with no hope of finding a permanent position Dorothy’s stuck unable to envision the future or cut ties with the past. “What did you call it she asks herself “when a life stopped developing but it didn’t end?Christine Smallwood’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.
