Despite what publicists and jacket-copy writers might have you believe, there are way more readers out there who appreciate, and even prefer, novels in which not a whole lot happens. “Page-turner” needn’t only apply to the action-filled or plot-driven. That’s not to say that things don’t happen in Christine Smallwood’s
The Life Of The Mind (March 2, Hogarth), which centers on English adjunct Dorothy in the days and weeks following her miscarriage due to a blighted ovum. (The writer structured her novel around the prolonged, intermittent bleeding of her main character, who views her body with a matter-of-fact curiosity.) Dorothy grades papers, rides the subway, attends a literary conference. Scenes set around a karaoke party and an underwater puppet show (!) are given the kind of symbolic weight one might more likely see in short fiction. As with so many exemplary novels in which plot is not the driving force, the main attraction of