Book Review: Discontent by Beatriz Serrano
An overdone archetype delivered at room temperature (mostly)
Overview: Discontent is a debut novel from Beatriz Serrano. Beatriz Serrano is a journalist and writer having written for publications like BuzzFeed, Vanity Fair, GQ, Harper’s Bazaar, S Moda, and Vogue according to Penguin Random House and is a co-host of a successful podcast “Arsenic Caviar.”
Discontent is a novel about Marisa, a 32-year old mid-level ad agency creative absolutely drowning by the mediocrity of corporate and her own life. This book promises a dark comedy, sharp wit, and pointed observation about the absurdity of corporate and the existential weight of a life shaped by it (and aware of it).
From the back cover: “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.”
Do not read further unless you are okay with spoilers!
This novel demonstrates that it could have been something sharper but ultimately gives us an unoriginal POV that promised consistent sharp wit and pointed corporate absurdity but delivers another boring tale of a mediocre white woman’s inner monologue about her own victimhood. Here’s why:
1. Overdone archetype. The novel is from Marisa’s point of view in first person. Marisa is 32-years old mid-level creative director at an ad agency that has anxiety she discovered by the heart palpitations she experienced every time her alarm went off before work. Her inner monologue is one continuous eye roll at everyone and everything at her job including the too-eager copywriter deriving self-worth from work, domineering account manager with cliché problematic takes, and lazily sexist head of creative that managed to offer up four white men (two of which were legless) as speakers for the retreat but needed Marisa to “find a woman” for diversity. Almost every decision in relation to work that Marisa makes is to delegate, plagiarize, and act busy in order to self-soothe with YouTube videos in and out of the office.
I will need to point out that there are glimpses of inner monologue that really do give the sharp wit and pointed observation I expected from this novel (see the redeeming mention below) but it was one-off moments we’re left wanting more of.
We’ve seen this archetype already with the advent of My Year of Rest and Relaxation and following “weird girl lit” renaissance in US/UK lit but I can’t help but notice that despite this story being from a Spanish author, is still very much in the same vein of the privileged white woman self-pity story promised to be “unhinged.”
2. Inconsistent characterization. Contradiction is built into Marisa’s character. She has the utmost apathy about her job and life but simultaneously feels a seemingly ever present anxiety which I think is purposeful and even relatable.
However, there were certain details and plot points in the novel that just did not track with what we know about Marisa’s character. For example, a main motivation for Marisa is to do the least amount of work possible but is somehow also teaching a course on top of her full time job (albeit she uses the student’s work for idea generation on her own projects). The scene where she decides to drug everyone via spiked pineapple juice at the retreat during her “creativity” speech did not translate as the product of a “complete spiral” as referenced in the synopsis. Marisa smoking a joint at the retreat and brief make out with the staff in her room did not communicate unraveling but rather something we might expect from Marisa’s character.
What could have hit was maybe an escalation of Marisa’s behavior with additional scenes at the retreat where she perceives that some of her co-workers began to notice. We know that one of the biggest indicators she may be “spiraling” would be a depletion of the act she has perfected over the years. A shedding of that veil expressed through observations or surprise of a co-worker at the retreat may have made the pineapple juice scene feel like a real breaking point.
3. Over generalized version of corporate. I will preface this with the fact that this point may have some bias as someone coming from an American corporate background. The workplace setting and characters feel as if drawn from a secondhand generalized version of corporate in the characters (see above) and over reliance on corporate cliches about campaigns being the best yet, small talk before virtual meetings, overeager co-workers, coffee pod drama, problematic takes on maternity, or being deemed the diversity voice after saying one thing perceived as “feminist”. I would have liked to see a realistic take on corporate for which we can devise a universal experience that still supported the satire of it all. The one story line this did work was with Rita. We learn that an office friend of Marisa’s had possibly taken her own life and we see Marisa grappling with this. When Marisa unpacks a box of Rita’s things, she comes across a notebook containing somewhat satiric caricatures of her co-workers until she finds one of her too. She wonders if Rita actually even liked her or if she even knew Rita at all.
4. An example of where something deeper could have happened, but did not. There was one scene where Marisa leaves the office, takes her Ativan, and goes to see “The Garden of Earthly Delights” by Hieronymus Bosch. When you look up this work, it’s a 3-panel artwork from the late 1400’s depicting Eden, the Garden, and then Hell in a very detailed and surreal artwork. The middle panel of this piece is the “Garden of Earthly Delights” which I understand is a kind of hedonistic limbo (likely my wildly over simplified take on its meaning) which then gives way to a hellish landscape. The painter is even mentioned in the synopsis.
This painting is never really mentioned again in the novel. We learn that Marisa wanted to study art at 18 and wanted to pursue working in the Prado at one time but traded in stability for the arts years ago. We get such a moment with this painting but never get a meaningful reference it to it again. Was this just a scene to give us Marisa’s backstory that she didn’t always dream of being an ad-agency creative? This could have been an invitation to later even give one nod to this work or the artist in Marisa’s own experience of corporate and maybe a deeper message but we never get that.
A redeeming mention:
1. Specific segments of monologue really hit. On Pgs. 74-75, Marisa is brought into the room after being prompted on a client “crises” and is guided to Ramon’s office (creative director) by Natalia (Marisa’s copywriter). She enters the room to find Maika (an account manager) who say’s “About time”. Serrano writes -
“Ramon is with Maika, who mutters a clearly audible “About time” when we walk in, as if she were trying to make Natalia more tense than she already is. I detest her with every fiber of my being. I detest her suit jacket, her luxury-brand purse, her aura of always wanting to speak to the manager. I detest her high school-bully-attitude, her way of exerting subtle but constant pressure on her coworkers, the ease with which she asks you to do things that aren’t part of your job and how, when she manages to get you to do them, acts like she was the one doing you a favor and, as such, you owe her something. I detest her loyalty to the company, her possession of it, her conviction that work makes us better people. I detest her smug expression when she closes a deal, when a project comes off, when she gets her way. And I hate when something doesn’t succeed and her carrion-eater gaze starts looking for people to blame. For a second, I think she can sense the hatred she provokes in me and she brazenly holds my gaze. I’m the one who ends up lowering my eyes. I’m terrified that witch can read my thoughts.”
This poignantly captured the feeling of this one person encompassing all you hate about corporate. How their beliefs, ideals, and relationship to it, and thriving in it could elicit such an inner intensity. Yet, because of this they hold a certain power in that world and you feel resentment for the fear you feel around them. I wished the novel could have carried this sharpness and it shows that Serrano could get there but didn’t with this one.
