Discipline - by Larissa Pham (Hardcover)

About the Book

"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 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"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

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)

"An exhilarating, exquisite book, full of an eerie intelligence and startling compassion . . . a pitch-perfect novel."--Ayșegül Savaș, author of The Anthropologists

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.

Review Quotes

"Discipline is an amazing, sharp excoriation of so many things: damage, creativity, ambition, and determination. . . . Pham understands the uneasy overlaps between public acclaim and public notoriety, personal humiliation and personal anger, worldly successes and worldly sins. Read it."--Bidisha, author of The Future of Serious Art

"Art bleeds into life in Larissa Pham's exhilarating, exquisite book, full of an eerie intelligence and startling compassion. . . . A pitch-perfect novel."--Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists

"Prose with a clarity and edge like glass, with a crispness that gives the atmosphere of a thriller . . . Discipline braids life, art, and the fictions we tell ourselves."--Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour

"Discipline wrecked me in the best way. To say that it is a brilliant excavation--of artistic production, of how to craft a meaningful life as an artist and a person, of radical generosity--is an understatement."--Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation

"With prose that is both lush and precise, Discipline reads like a taut thriller even though it is really an elegant exploration of creativity and commitment to one's craft, and how when we don't value our craft almost anything can rob us of it. . . . An admirable debut."--Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist

"A delicate, wry, taut, suspenseful reading experience, Discipline captivated me from beginning to end. Pham is an original, real talent."--Jami Attenberg, author of All This Could Be Yours

"Intensely smart, evocative, and gorgeously written . . . Not only is Discipline a gripping and suspenseful revenge story, it's also a novel of ideas. It asks the hardest questions about art and death and the responsibilities we all have to one another. Pham is a great writer."--Stuart Nadler, author of Rooms for Vanishing

"A nerve-tingling feat exploring how a person and an artist are made . . . The narrator's exquisite voice balances an impeccable control over deep tumults of feeling. I couldn't look away from her self-imposed odyssey and the reverberating consequences awaiting her at her ultimate destination. I'm in awe of Pham's talent, sensibility, and intellect."--Alyssa Songsiridej, author of Little Rabbit

"Pham . . . turns to fiction with the dazzling story of an art critic who publishes a novel about the former professor who rejected her after their affair. . . . It's a page-turner, but the main event is Christine's meditations on art, ambition, and the relationship between art and life. . . . This is electrifying."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"A brilliant, entrancing, and provocative mirror-within-mirrors tale of art, story, and power, is all that and more."--Booklist, starred review

"Beautiful and evocative."--Kirkus Reviews

"At just over 200 pages, Larissa Pham's debut novel packs quite the punch. Discipline follows Christine, an author who's on tour promoting her new revenge-fantasy book. The book was inspired by a tricky past relationship with a professor, which led to her giving up painting--and by writing it, she's gained a sense of control over the past and her choice to give up her craft. But when said professor calls her up and invites her to his cabin, she takes a detour, and her narrative threatens to unravel."--Bustle

About the Author

Larissa Pham is the author of the essay collection Pop Song, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard Prize. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, Aperture, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in fiction from the Bennington Writing Seminars and is an assistant professor of writing at The New School. Discipline is her first novel.