An audacious, darkly funny novel and perfect summer read about a young woman in Madrid whose carefully crafted office persona threatens to crack when she's forced to attend her company's annual retreat
Life can't go on like this - can it? This book is for everyone who has ever wanted more- more time, more meaning, more connection.
On the surface, Marisa's life looks enviable. She lives in a nice apartment in the heart of Madrid, her friendly neighbour and lover Pablo lives downstairs, and she's risen quickly through the ranks at a successful advertising agency.
And yet Marisa hates her job and everything about it. Over one hot summer, she spends her working hours locked in her office, bingeing on YouTube videos and getting high on tranquilizers, wondering if everyone cries when their alarm goes off in the morning. When she can, she escapes to the air-conditioned basement of the Prado Museum.
But Marisa's fa ade of success is in danger of being exposed as she's forced to deliver a talk on creativity at her company's horrendous annual team-building retreat. Surrounded by psychopathic bosses, annoyingly overzealous colleagues, flirty facilitators, and an excess of drugs, Marisa is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.
Told with acid humour to explosive consequences, Discontent is a dazzling tale of modern angst and finally acting on our wilder impulses to reclaim our lives from work.
About the Author
Beatriz Serrano is a writer and a journalist who has written for publications such as BuzzFeed, Vanity Fair, GQ, Harper's Bazaar, S Moda, and Vogue. She works for El Pais and, along with writer Guillermo Alonso, co-directs the prizewinning podcast Arsenico Caviar. Discontent is her first novel. She currently lives in Madrid.
Industry Reviews
Our heroine compulsively watches YouTube, pops Ativan, quotes both Britney Spears and Proust, dreads work small talk, and, at one point, Googles 'how to be creative.' I adored her. Discontent is a razor-sharp debut with a riveting climax
-- Anna Dorn, author of Perfume & Pain
This intelligent, engaging novel perfectly captures the discontent of our contemporary minds, managing all the while to be totally hilarious
-- Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists
A wry work of spectacular wit, Discontent skewers every novel of workplace ennui that has come before it. Beatriz Serrano writes with a caustic flair for detail, exploring the small humiliations of the everyday corporate office with charm and utter hilarity. Absolutely brilliant
-- Danya Kukafka, author of Notes on An Execution
Office Space for literary weirdos. Discontent is brimming with witticisms and scathing observations about our modern-day malaise. While Serrano's narrator is drowning in existential dread, her debut novel never feels weighed down. Electric, lively, and brilliantly constructed by a new writer of immense talent
-- Jean Kyoung Frazier, author of Pizza Girl
An acidic reflection on the existential crisis of a generation that thought it had guaranteed success. . . Humour in abundance, a punk ending that blows the reader's mind
-- Glamour (Spain)
An x-ray as clear as it is painful of a job market that is often willing to steal the souls of those who inhabit it... one of the most outstanding literary debuts of the year
-- Harper’s Bazaar (Spain)
