Discipline
About the Book
Discipline
A taut, electrifying debut about a woman forced to confront unsettling truths about herself, her past, and the life she rebuilt following a ruinous affair with her former mentor, from a “lit world phenom” (Harper’s Bazaar).
I have the sense that something is being drawn between us. Not drawn as in line but as in arrow pulled back. Yet I don’t know which of us holds the bow, and which of us faces the arrow.
Christine is on tour for her novel, a revenge fantasy based on a real-life relationship gone bad with an older professor 10 years prior. Now on the road, she’s 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 that 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 house, on a remote island off the coast of Maine, their encounter threatens to change the very foundations of her life as she’s imagined it.
A pristine and provocative high-wire act toggling the fictions we construct for ourselves just to survive and the possibilities that lie beyond them, DISCIPLINE launches a spellbinding inquiry into the nature of art-making and rigor, intimacy and attention, punishment and release.
Discipline
- Publication Date: January 20, 2026
- Genres: Fiction
- Hardcover: 224 pages
- Publisher: Random House
- ISBN-10: 0593979648
- ISBN-13: 9780593979648


