Discontent by Beatriz Serrano

DESCRIPTION

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 quickly risen through the ranks at a successful advertising agency. And yet she’s drowning in a dark hole of existential dread induced by the banality 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 getting high on tranquilizers. When she has the time, she escapes to her favorite museum where she contemplates the meaning of life while staring at Hieronymus Bosch paintings, or trying to get hit by a car so she can go on disability.

But Marisa's dubious success, which is largely built on lies and work she's stolen from other people, is in danger of being exposed when she's forced to go on her company’s team-building retreat. Isolated in the Segovia forests, haunted by the deeply buried memory of a former coworker, and surrounded by psychopathic bosses, overzealous coworkers, flirty retreat staff, and an excess of drugs, Marisa finds herself acting on her wildest impulses and is pushed to the brink of a complete spiral.

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, El País, SModa and Vogue. Along with writer Guillermo Alonso, she currently co-directs the podcast "Arsenic Caviar", which won the Ondas Prize for best conversational podcast. Discontent is her first novel. She lives in Madrid.

PRAISE

"A wry work of spectacular wit, Discontent skewers every novel of workplace ennui that has come before it. Beatriz Serrano writes with a caustic flare 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

"This intelligent, engaging novel perfectly captures the discontent of our contemporary minds, managing all the while to be totally hilarious." — Ayşegül Savaş, author of The Anthropologists

DETAILS

Paperback | 192 pages