From the very first page of Discontent, the funny and sardonic debut novel by Spanish writer Beatriz Serrano, lyrics from Portugal. The Man’s “Purple Yellow Red & Blue” lodged in my head and stayed for the duration of the book: “Workin’ just don’t work for me.” Marisa, the thirty-something protagonist, has a pretty sweet life thanks to a good job as a manager at a Madrid advertising agency. She has a great apartment, a hunky friend-and-neighbor with benefits, and wants for nothing material. She also can’t stand to work—like, at all—and spends her days doing as little as possible and manipulating office dynamics to do even less than that.
Clear-eyed to the point of cynicism, Marisa understands she fumbled her way into a nice gig. “The truth is I don’t know how to do anything and I don’t know how I got here. I suppose it was by perfecting the office game until everybody believed I was a great professional.” She’s not lying.
“I met a crazy advertising guy in a nightclub and he hired me for his agency, because back then those were the crazy things crazy advertising people did after having a bowl of cocaine for breakfast. The trend, back when there was money, was to hire advertising graduates as interns and then add a couple of people with different profiles, with no experience in the field, to provide ‘freshness,‘ ‘new ideas,‘ and ‘diverging visions.‘“
Marisa has no qualifications and no real skills, except reading and responding to the room—and obsessively watching YouTube videos. She’s so opposed to work, she muses about going on disability: “Recently I discovered that an accident on the way to work is considered an *in itinere* work accident, so you get paid your full salary while on leave, and ever since then, I cross the street carefree, sometimes even riskily.”
Discontent is set across three acts: a long and entertaining windup of world-building (mostly Marisa’s take on office dynamics); a short, and to Marisa horrifying, company retreat; and a speedy and surprisingly tidy resolution. Structurally, it reminds me of a rollercoaster with a long and measured climb, a sudden and awesome drop, and a sharp bank turn to the end. At 200 pages, it goes fast, and fun.