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From a dazzling new international literary voice, a novel about a malcontented young woman whose carefully crafted office persona threatens to crack when she's forced to attend her company's annual retreat
On the surface, Marisa's life looks enviable. She lives in a beautiful apartment in the center of Madrid, she has a hot neighbor who is always around to sleep with her, and she's rapidly risen through the ranks at an advertising agency. And yet she's drowning in a dark hole of existential dread induced by the expectations of corporate life. Marisa hates her job and everyone at it. She spends her working hours locked in her office hiding from her coworkers, bingeing YouTube videos, and taking Valium. When she has the time, she escapes to her favorite museum where she contemplates the meaning of human life while staring at Hieronymus Bosch paintings, or trying to get hit by a car so she can go on disability.
But Marisa's success, which is largely built on lies and work she's stolen from other people, is in danger of being unraveled when she's forced to go on her company's annual team-building retreat. Isolated in the Spanish mountains, surrounded by a psychopathic boss, overly enthusiastic co-workers who revel in their exploitation, a flirty retreat staff, and haunted by a deeply-buried memory about a past coworker, Marisa is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.
A darkly funny, provocative, and incisive tale of our modern times, Discontent explores the unease we bury eight hours a day, and how explosive it is when it rises to the surface. Beatriz Serrano is a writer and a journalist who has written for publications such as BuzzFeed, Vanity Fair, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, SModa and Vogue. She currently works for El País and, along with writer Guillermo Alonso, co-directs the podcast "Arsenic Caviar", which won the Ondas Prize for best conversational podcast. Discontent is her first novel. She currently lives in Madrid.
On the surface, Marisa's life looks enviable. She lives in a beautiful apartment in the center of Madrid, she has a hot neighbor who is always around to sleep with her, and she's rapidly risen through the ranks at an advertising agency. And yet she's drowning in a dark hole of existential dread induced by the expectations of corporate life. Marisa hates her job and everyone at it. She spends her working hours locked in her office hiding from her coworkers, bingeing YouTube videos, and taking Valium. When she has the time, she escapes to her favorite museum where she contemplates the meaning of human life while staring at Hieronymus Bosch paintings, or trying to get hit by a car so she can go on disability.
But Marisa's success, which is largely built on lies and work she's stolen from other people, is in danger of being unraveled when she's forced to go on her company's annual team-building retreat. Isolated in the Spanish mountains, surrounded by a psychopathic boss, overly enthusiastic co-workers who revel in their exploitation, a flirty retreat staff, and haunted by a deeply-buried memory about a past coworker, Marisa is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.
A darkly funny, provocative, and incisive tale of our modern times, Discontent explores the unease we bury eight hours a day, and how explosive it is when it rises to the surface. Beatriz Serrano is a writer and a journalist who has written for publications such as BuzzFeed, Vanity Fair, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, SModa and Vogue. She currently works for El País and, along with writer Guillermo Alonso, co-directs the podcast "Arsenic Caviar", which won the Ondas Prize for best conversational podcast. Discontent is her first novel. She currently lives in Madrid.