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A Novel
by Larissa Pham
Book Reviewed by: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 dont 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.
Chapter 1
Clemins
I was running late, and by the time I got to the gate they were asking people to check their bags because the overhead compartments were full. I was late because I love being in airports—that floating, anonymous feeling—and I had lingered too long at a café, thinking I had arrived early enough to sit with a coffee. I hadn't, so on the jet bridge I turned over my suitcase and boarded the plane.
After we landed, I went to the baggage claim and stood, waiting, for thirty minutes until I realized someone else had taken my bag. There was a black hard-shell suitcase going around on the belt but it wasn't mine, and I felt a sudden lightness, a disorientation. By this point I was late again, so after talking to the airline, I took the elevated train to just north of the city, where I was giving a reading at a university. While I was on the train, my phone rang.
The person who took your bag called to let us know they have it, the airline representative said. He's...
In Larissa Pham's debut novel, Discipline, we are introduced to Christine, who is at the airport in Chicago, about to embark on a tour promoting her first book. The novel, published by a small press, is a revenge fantasy based on an affair with her former painting professor and mentor, Richard, from ten years earlier, an affair that ended badly and caused her to abandon her painting career. The email shatters her illusion of closure, and she becomes consumed with what he thinks of her book. Their years of silence end as they exchange emails, in which she accepts his invitation to join him in his cabin in Maine—she plans to finally confront him once and for all. Discipline is a subtle literary thriller that invites questions about mentorship in the creative arts, the potential for it to go awry, the stories we tell ourselves, art-making, and revenge...continued
Full Review
(1149 words)
(Reviewed by Letitia Asare).
Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation and Where Are You Really From
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. This astonishing book changed me; I'm not the same person I was before I read it. Stuart Nadler, author of Rooms for Vanishing
Discipline was the best book I read this year. It's intensely smart, evocative, and gorgeously written. This is the sort of brilliant novel I'm always searching for. 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. Larissa Pham is a great writer. I loved this book.
In Discipline, Larissa Pham's debut novel, the main character is a former painter who pursued an MFA but dropped out after an affair with her college mentor and professor ended badly. The book is divided into two parts, and each of the five chapters in Part One is titled after a painter. Pham weaves these artists into the text as the main character, Christine, stumbles across their work—in a museum, for instance, or a bar. In an interview with Vogue magazine, Pham explains that visual art is central to her life, which is why Christine is drawn to and compelled by it. "It's something that I gave Christine for a number of reasons, but I think because I do like writing about visual art," says Pham. Christine provides interesting ...
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