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The Life of the Mind
The Life of the Mind: A Novel | Christine Smallwood
3 posts | 2 read | 1 reading | 7 to read
"As an adjunct professor of English with a draining and tedious courseload, Dorothy feels "like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had no idea what else to do but who had lost her belief in the essential sanctity of the enterprise." No one but her partner knows that she's just had a miscarriage, not even her therapists--Dorothy being the kind of person who begins seeing a second because she's too conflict-averse to break things off with the first. It's not so much that Dorothy is ashamed of the miscarriage itself as she is of the sense of purpose the prospect of motherhood had provided, of how much she'd wanted it. The freedom not to be a mother is one of the victories of feminism. So why does she feel like a failure? (That's another thing she's ashamed of.) The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of aspirations, of possibility, of the illusion that our minds can ever free us from the tyranny of our bodies. And yet our minds are all we have to make sense of a world largely out of our control--which is to say our world; a world where things happen, but there is no plot. And so Dorothy must make do with what she has, as the weeks pass and the bleeding subsides. Often witty and consistently alive to how stories end and begin again, The Life of the Mind is a moving, darkly funny, and starkly original examination of how life, as they say, goes on"--
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review
Megabooks
The Life of the Mind: A Novel | Christine Smallwood
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Mehso-so

First, you have to have a strong stomach for LOTS of talk about womanly bleeding to read this. That may be why this didn‘t make it big OR maybe it‘s because I couldn‘t find the thread of this book. The narrative just didn‘t make sense to me. Maybe it just went over my head. 🤷🏻‍♀️

This is one of my #AlgorithmExperiment books from Amazon where I bought books I hadn‘t heard of that it recommended. 3/5 Amazon. Do better!

CW: miscarriage, abortion

Lindy Good on you for trying this. Algorithms will never be as good at recommending books as an attentive librarian or bookseller. 1y
Cinfhen Disappointing but at least you tried. 1y
Megabooks @Lindy so true! (edited) 1y
See All 6 Comments
Megabooks @Cinfhen I‘ve got two more! 1y
Cinfhen Hope they are better 🤞🏽🤞🏽 1y
Megabooks 🤞🏻 for sure! 1y
73 likes6 comments
blurb
Mccall0113
The Life of the Mind: A Novel | Christine Smallwood
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I have no clue what I just read. What happened here? So confused.

review
sarahljensen
The Life of the Mind: A Novel | Christine Smallwood
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Pickpick

Particularly good for anyone who has been an adjunct, which I have. As a warning, the protagonist's miscarriage informs much of the book, so if you're in a place right now where that would be upsetting, skip this one. Overall, I found it well written and difficult to put down.

#litsycats #catsoflitsy

RaeLovesToRead So floofy 😻😻 2y
sarahljensen @RaeLovesToRead Oh, yes. All the floofs :) 2y
34 likes2 comments