Missouri Williams’s ‘The Vivisectors’ Reviewed: A Campus Novel of Hatred and Nihilism
Missouri Williams’s second novel, “The Vivisectors,” follows Agathe, a young woman who hates her father, mother, boss, and university. The novel is set in an unnamed city where the university battles encroaching greenery. Agathe works for a lecturer in urban planning and despises her. A student named Adam says something offensive in class, sparking a cancel-culture controversy. Agathe eventually drowns her paralyzed mother. The novel explores themes of brutality, entropy, and disgust. Williams’s debut, “The Doloriad,” was published in 2022. “The Vivisectors” was subject to an eight-way bidding war in Britain; Williams lives in Prague. The review criticizes the novel’s emptiness and abstraction, noting its search for spirituality but failure to defeat meaning.
Key facts
- Missouri Williams’s second novel 'The Vivisectors' was published last month in the US.
- The novel’s narrator is a young woman named Agathe who hates her father, mother, boss, and university.
- Agathe’s father is a famous writer and academic.
- Agathe’s mother attempted suicide by drowning in a bathtub and is now paralyzed and silent.
- Agathe drowns her mother in a man-made pond near her father’s home.
- The novel features a cancel-culture-on-campus story involving a student named Adam.
- Williams’s debut novel 'The Doloriad' was published in 2022.
- Williams lives in Prague.
- The review notes the novel’s preoccupation with emptiness and abstraction.
- The novel includes descriptions of light and geometric shapes.
Entities
Artists
- Missouri Williams
Institutions
- The Drift
Locations
- Prague
- Czech Republic
- Britain
- United Kingdom
- United States