Discipline

A Novel

By: Larissa Pham

Narrated by: Quyen Ngo

A taut, electrifying debut about a woman forced to confront unsettling truths about herself, her past, and the life she rebuilt following a ruinous affair with her former mentor, from “a writer to keep a close eye on” (The New York Times Book Review)

“Precise and spellbinding . . . That knotty relationship, as propulsive as it is maddening, forces the reader to wonder: How do you separate your art from the people—and painful experiences—that helped to forge it?”—Vogue

A BEST BOOK OF THE SEASON: Bustle, Debutiful, Harper's Bazaar

I have the sense that something is being drawn between us. Not drawn as in line but as in arrow pulled back. Yet I don’t know which of us holds the bow, and which of us faces the arrow.

Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor ten years prior. Now on the road, she’s seeking answers—about how to live a good life and what it means to make art—through intimate conversations with strangers, past lovers, and friends.

But when the antagonist of her novel—her old painting professor—reaches out in a series of sly communiques after years of silence to tell her that he’s read her book, Christine must reckon with what it means to lose the reins of a narrative she wrote precisely to maintain control. When her professor invites her to join him at his house, on a remote island off the coast of Maine, their encounter threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she’s imagined it.

A pristine and provocative high-wire act toggling the fictions we construct for ourselves just to survive and the possibilities that lie beyond them, Discipline launches a spellbinding inquiry into the nature of art-making and rigor, intimacy and attention, punishment and release.

Tedious

I wish there was a character even remotely likable in this novel. No joy to be found. Lllnsnndnsj