Et cetera : What We're Reading: Discipline

'Discipline' by Larissa Pham is a dark delight, diving deep into obsession, art, power, and the slippery nature of narrative control. Christine’s attempt to reshape herself after the fallout of an affair with her former professor feels both self-aware and self-destructive.

The metafictional layer—a novelist confronting the real-life subject of her revenge story—adds illuminating tension around authorship and ownership. Who gets to tell the story? And what happens when the “villain” reads your version of events?

With a 3.74 rating on Goodreads.com, the synopsis reads:

“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, Christine is 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 cabin, deep in the woods of Maine, what she encounters threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she's imagined it.”

Check it out at the Vinton Public Library today & happy reading, friends.

~Heather