{"product_id":"discipline-one-of-the-most-anticipated-debuts-of-the-year-9781805226703","title":"Discipline: One of the Most Anticipated Debuts of the Year","description":"\u003cp\u003eA taut, provocative debut novel about creativity and sex, coercion and control, with shades of Rachel Cusk and Katie Kitamura.\u003c\/p\u003eWhen two people fall apart, who gets to tell their story?Christine is a young writer touring her debut novel - a thinly disguised tale of the affair she had with her professor ten years earlier. He was magnetic, domineering, both the sponsor of her early promise and its destroyer. But he surely forgot her long ago, and the temptation to exorcise her past was overwhelming.Then, between hotel rooms and bookstores, formal dinners and road-trip hook-ups, she receives a series of sly, unsettling emails and finally an invitation to visit the professor's isolated house on an island off the coast of Maine. Against her better judgement, Christine is drawn back into his orbit, risking forever losing control of the narrative she's worked so hard to create. Taut and provocative, Discipline walks the lines between creativity and control, truth and memory, coercion and desire.\u003ch4\u003eDetails\u003c\/h4\u003e\u003cp\u003eISBN13: 9781805226703\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eFormat: Hardback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eNumber of Pages: 224\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eEdition: Main\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication Date: 17 Feb 2026\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublisher: Profile Books Ltd\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePublication City, Country: London, United Kingdom\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDimensions (cm): 22(H)x14(L)x2.6(W)332\u003cbr\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWeight (gm): 332\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch4\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h4\u003eLarissa Pham is the author of the essay collection \u003ci\u003ePop Song\u003c\/i\u003e, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle John Leonard prize. Her writing has appeared in \u003ci\u003eGranta\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eNation\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAperture \u003c\/i\u003eand elsewhere. \u003ci\u003eDiscipline \u003c\/i\u003eis her first novel.\u003ch4\u003eReviews\u003c\/h4\u003eDiscipline coolly questions the ethics and processes of fiction and art, examining the toll they take both on the practitioner and anyone unlucky enough to be in their orbit * Financial Times *\u003cbr\u003eDisciplined ... spare. Pham is a writer to keep a close eye on * The New York Times *\u003cbr\u003eA deceptively quiet and beautifully written story, Discipline plays masterfully with issues of consent, memory and artistic licence. It asks its readers to judge which is more real: what actually happened in the past, or how we feel about it in the present * Buzz Magazine *\u003cbr\u003eA story of ideas, but it combines deep philosophical inquiry with thriller vibes * Crack *\u003cbr\u003eThere is no shortage of asymmetrical love affairs in literature, whether the subjects are mismatched in age, power or personality. Charlotte Brontë gave us Jane Eyre and Mr Rochester. F Scott Fitzgerald gave us Daisy Buchanan and Jay Gatsby. DH Lawrence gave us Lady Chatterley and Oliver Mellors. And with her spiky debut novel, the American writer Larissa Pham joins the club... The pages are splattered with clever references to specific paintings that will have you gleefully googling them... On the surface, Discipline might be about the aftermath of an illicit affair. But - much like a painting - way more can be revealed with a longer, more thorough look * Sunday Times *\u003cbr\u003eA delicate, wry, taut, suspenseful reading experience, Discipline captivated me from beginning to end. Larissa Pham is an original, real talent -- Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins\u003cbr\u003eLush and precise, Discipline reads like a taut thriller even though it is really an elegant exploration of creativity -- Roxane Gay\u003cbr\u003eWith a clarity and crispness that gives the atmosphere of a thriller, Discipline braids life, art and the fictions we tell ourselves -- Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour\u003cbr\u003eCombines the thrilling and agonized travails of her young narrator with the lucid and steady eye of a born critic ... A bold and promising debut -- Melissa Febos, author of Body Work\u003cbr\u003eA simmering exploration of what it means to lose control of the narrative you wrote to survive ... Quietly seething until its end, Discipline is an impressively disturbing story * Big Issue *\u003cbr\u003eArt bleeds into life in Larissa Pham's exhilarating, exquisite book, full of an eerie intelligence and startling compassion. A pitch-perfect novel -- Aysegül Savas, author of The Anthropologists\u003cbr\u003eDiscipline wrecked me in the best way. To say that it is brilliant is an understatement. This astonishing book changed me; I'm not the same person I was before I read it -- Elaine Hsieh Chou, author of Disorientation\u003cbr\u003eUsing precise, crystalline language, Pham explores sex, art and power dynamics, with a succession of characters relating Cuskian microstories that you'll be thinking about for a long time afterwards -- Kathryn Bromwich * Nerve *\u003cbr\u003eBrooklyn writer Larissa Pham is such a sharp, cool writer - she seems to see through people like an X-ray - and this book is stuffed with wisdom about the way we relate to and experience each other. Discipline dissects how two people can live through the same relationship in completely different ways - and how no story is ever entirely your own. * Dazed *\u003cbr\u003eThe best book I read this year: intensely smart, evocative, and gorgeously written. Not only a gripping and suspenseful revenge story, Discipline is also a novel of ideas. It asks the hardest questions about art and death and the responsibilities we all have to one another. -- Stuart Nadler, author of Rooms for Vanishing\u003cbr\u003eDiscipline is original, engrossing, and flawlessly written. I enjoyed it very much... If Pham had presented me with a further fifty pages on Vija Celmins and left the old professor languishing in the past, I wouldn't have minded in the least -- Nina Allan, author of The Dollmaker\u003cbr\u003eDiscipline is a slim, potent page-turner, a slow-burning mystery and a meditation on the intermingling of art and life, love and revenge -- Jennifer Higgie\u003cbr\u003eDiscipline is an amazing, sharp excoriation of so many things: damage, creativity, ambition and determination. It takes a scalpel to the underside of the artistic dream, where sordid relationships and burning desire to 'make it' collide in weird and counter-intuitive ways. As artists, sometimes our worst experiences are the making of us creatively. Larissa Pham understands the uneasy overlaps between public acclaim and public notoriety, personal humiliation and personal anger, worldly successes and worldly sins. Read it. -- BIDISHA, author of The Future of Serious Art\u003cbr\u003ePraise for Larissa Pham: 'Her gaze is ceaselessly empathetic, and it is this generosity that binds the reader to her quest for understanding. Even with all the pain of heartbreak... Pham manages to generate sincere hopefulness * Observer *\u003cbr\u003eA masterclass in emotional vulnerability... pivots between art and personal narrative with such dexterity that they begin to feel inseparable * Nylon *","brand":"Larissa Pham","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48852125057241,"sku":"9781805226703","price":36.99,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0502\/9530\/8441\/files\/9781805226703.jpg?v=1782390729","url":"https:\/\/www.arielbooks.com.au\/products\/discipline-one-of-the-most-anticipated-debuts-of-the-year-9781805226703","provider":"Ariel","version":"1.0","type":"link"}