The Life of the Mind opens with Dorothy sitting on a library toilet, checking her phone and examining the "thick, curdled knots of string" coming out of her body. No one but her boyfriend knows that she's had a miscarriage, not even her therapists-Dorothy has two of them. An adjunct professor of English in New York City with no hope of finding a permanent position, Dorothy's stuck, unable to envision the future or cut ties with the past.