Beatriz Serrano, a journalist for Spain's El País newspaper, hypnotizes with her brilliant fiction debut, Discontent, engagingly translated by Mara Faye Lethem. Serrano's dedication, "For everyone who wakes up, every day, with no desire to go to work," sets the perfect tone to introduce her protagonist's attitude about her stifling career.
Marisa, 32, has worked in advertising for eight years, the last four as creative strategist for a Madrid agency. She also teaches at a private university, "thanks to the English diploma [she] listed on LinkedIn." She attributes her success to "perfecting the office game until everybody believed [she] was a great professional," yet she can only get through the days by watching YouTube behind closed doors, escaping to nonexistent meetings, relying on the Internet and her students to do her work. Alas, she's utterly miserable: "I broke down every morning when the alarm beeped because life, lived this way, seemed like a badly written tragedy." She's already lost (to suicide) the sole co-worker with whom she had "encounters that could be classified as pleasant." And now she's facing a team-building retreat, "an entire weekend surrounded by people," all of whom she can't stand. Drugs, alcohol, and kissing strangers may well be the only way to survive.
Serrano's biting insight illuminates virtually every page, rife with stinging wisdom ("My job is to be nice and sell snake oil") and cutting one-liners ("It's 5:30. I've tricked capitalism for one more day"), as she deftly exposes the herculean challenges of quotidian life. She closes her acknowledgments with a thankful, delightful promise for more: "I trust we will meet again." --Terry Hong