Editorial Content for Discipline
Book
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Reviewer (text)
By this point, a fair number of novels have seemed to arise (at least in part) from the #MeToo movement. On first blush, DISCIPLINE may appear to be participating in that trend as well.
Although Larissa Pham's debut does share some characteristics with works like Susan Choi's TRUST EXERCISE or Lisa Halliday's ASYMMETRY, it also is decidedly its own novel. The book elegantly explores not just the power imbalances between a young female art student and her professor, but also the temptations of various kinds of revenge, the limits of compassion, and the rationale for making art in the first place.
"Whether readers are artists themselves or just like to think about the artistic process, DISCIPLINE offers plenty of opportunities for genuine contemplation."
Christine was once a fairly accomplished visual artist. Perhaps she was not as innately talented as some of her classmates, but certainly she was committed to her craft and improving all the time, thanks to her rigorous undergraduate education and recent acceptance into an MFA program in painting. Once there, however, an ill-advised sexual relationship with an older male professor --- combined with his public belittling of her work --- served to steer her away from the practice of visual art altogether, as she found herself completely unable to paint.
The artistic discipline that Christine landed on instead was writing. As the book opens, she's embarking on a modest tour to promote her recently published novel. Loosely based on that art school relationship, it also incorporates a revenge fantasy that she never acted upon in real life. Each chapter in the first half of DISCIPLINE follows Christine to a new stop on her tour as she interacts with strangers, acquaintances, and old friends, rivals and lovers. All along, she fields questions about why she turned from painting to writing and which aspects of her novel are "true."
It turns out that the "old professor" also has been reading Christine's novel. Midway through her tour, she begins getting messages from him that question the book’s version of events. He eventually invites her to join him at his new island home in Maine. Exhausted and dismayed by the general lack of audience enthusiasm on her tour, Christine reluctantly takes him up on his offer. In Maine, she has the chance to confront her novel's nemesis in the rapidly failing flesh and to contend at last with her own recollections of what happened and why.
It soon becomes apparent that what's unfolding in Maine is a sort of gentler version of what Christine had imagined for her novel. Will real-life Christine engage in a form of revenge, or will compassion win the day? Although DISCIPLINE is a very quiet and introspective novel, this fundamental question propels the plot in the second half. But although readers will become invested in Christine's choice, the real rewards of the book are the conversations that she has with herself and others about her motivation for art-making, whether literary or visual, and if being an artist is really a profession or a sort of all-consuming calling.
Whether readers are artists themselves or just like to think about the artistic process, DISCIPLINE offers plenty of opportunities for genuine contemplation.
Teaser
Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor 10 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.
Promo
Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor 10 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.
About the Book
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 “lit world phenom” (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 10 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.
Audiobook available, read by Quyen Ngo
