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Discipline

Discipline

A Novel

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 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.
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Praise for Discipline

“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

“[An] astute debut novel . . . beautiful and evocative . . . The novel simmers with tension and tenderness as Christine ponders the past and comes to terms with the present. Pham’s lithe prose is especially on display in her musings about love, intimacy, power, art, writing, survival, and agency. A quietly elegant debut from a writer with great promise.”—Kirkus Reviews
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About the Author

Larissa Pham
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. More by Larissa Pham
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