The Life of the Mind

Dorothy feels "like a janitor in the temple who continued to sweep because she had nowhere else to be but had lost her conviction in the intrinsic purity of the enterprise" as an adjunct professor of English in New York City with little prospect of finding a permanent appointment. Nobody, not even her therapists—Dorothy has two of them—knows she's recently suffered a miscarriage. She also can't bring herself to tell the other women in her life, including her friends, doctor, mentor, and mother. One of feminism's accomplishments is the freedom not to be a mother.

The Life of the Mind is a novel about endings: of youth, of professional goal, of potential, of the illusion that thoughts can ever liberate from the tyranny of bodies. It is piercingly intellectual and darkly hilarious. And yet, Dorothy's thinking is all she has to make sense of a world that is essentially beyond her control, a world where tragedy looms and has already arrived, a world where things happen but there is no storyline. There is a purpose, though, if Dorothy knows where to search, and as the weeks pass and the bleeding stops, she discovers it in the most unexpected locations, from a Las Vegas poolside to a homeroom singing session. As Dorothy is well aware, tales in literature come to an end. But, as they say, life goes on.

Detailed information:
Author: Christine Smallwood
Link to read: goodreads.com/book/show/54075354-the-life-of-the-mind