Overview

A young woman discovers what lurks beneath the system that anointed her among the best and brightest of her generation ""A smart, razor-sharp exploration of the precarious island of academic life and the cold unforgiving waters that surround it."" --Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather Laura, a student from a modest background, escapes her small town to join the ranks of the academic elite on a Weatherfield fellowship to study at Oxford University. She enthusiastically throws herself into her coursework, yet she is never able to escape a feeling of unease and dislocation among her fellow chosen ""students of promise and ambition."" Years later, back in the United States with a PhD and dissertation on Henry James, she loses her job as an adjunct professor and reconnects with the Weatherfield Foundation. Commissioned to write a history for its centennial, she becomes obsessed by the Gilded Age origins of the Weatherfield fortune, rooted in the exploitation and misery of sugar production. As she is lured back into abandoned friendships within the glimmering group, she discovers hidden aspects of herself and others that point the way to a terrifying freedom. Benefit is a vivid debut novel of personal awakening that offers a withering critique of toxic philanthropy and the American meritocracy.

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9781942658993

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A smart, razor-sharp exploration of the precarious island of academic life and the cold unforgiving waters that surround it. --Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather A compelling novel about friendship, education, and purpose, all illustrated through a cast of flawlessly realized characters. --Susan Perabo, author of Why They Run the Way They Do and The Fall of Lisa Bellow Siobhan Phillips's portrait of a stalled would-be academic is thrillingly intimate and ambitious in its scope, evoking at turns Rachel Cusk, Lynn Steger Strong's Want, and Christine Smallwood's The Life of the Mind. Deadpan and dread-filled, shadowed by the specters of war and late capitalism, Benefit probes both the futility and necessity of intellectual work, all in the wry, wise voice of an uncommonly clear-eyed friend. --Jessica Winter, author of Break in Case of Emergency and The Fourth Child

A compelling novel about friendship, education, and purpose, all illustrated through a cast of flawlessly realized characters. --Susan Perabo, author of Why They Run the Way They Do and The Fall of Lisa Bellow Siobhan Phillips's portrait of a stalled would-be academic is thrillingly intimate and ambitious in its scope, evoking at turns Rachel Cusk, Lynn Steger Strong's Want, and Christine Smallwood's The Life of the Mind. Deadpan and dread-filled, shadowed by the specters of war and late capitalism, Benefit probes both the futility and necessity of intellectual work, all in the wry, wise voice of an uncommonly clear-eyed friend. --Jessica Winter, author of Break in Case of Emergency and The Fourth Child

A smart, razor-sharp exploration of the precarious island of academic life and the cold unforgiving waters that surround it. --Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather A compelling novel about friendship, education, and purpose, all illustrated through a cast of flawlessly realized characters. --Susan Perabo, author of Why They Run the Way They Do and The Fall of Lisa Bellow Siobhan Phillips's portrait of a stalled would-be academic is thrillingly intimate and ambitious in its scope, evoking at turns Rachel Cusk, Lynn Steger Strong's Want, and Christine Smallwood's The Life of the Mind. Deadpan and dread-filled, shadowed by the specters of war and late capitalism, Benefit probes both the futility and necessity of intellectual work, all in the wry, wise voice of an uncommonly clear-eyed friend. --Jessica Winter, author of Break in Case of Emergency and The Fourth Child

Reading Group Choices Editors' Pick selection The Millions Most Anticipated Books selection Foreword Reviews Book of the Day selection Benefit is a fascinating twist on the typical campus novel. While most such novels acknowledge the presence of rigorous hierarchies in academia, Phillips adds a sophisticated and intensely sharp critique of how capitalism has weaponized the system of meritocracy. --On the Seawall Benefit is a fascinating novel--both a portrait of an industrial empire and revelatory about the elitist greed that often shadows philanthropy. It is also an unnerving glimpse into the impoverishment of academia, as scholars compete for part-time work and paltry salaries. --Foreword Reviews A smart, thoughtful read. --Library Journal Phillips's assured debut novel blends a complex journey of personal realizations with insights into the dark side of ambition and power. --Booklist Incisive. . . . Pulls back the veil on university hierarchies and social privilege. --Publishers Weekly Highlight[s] the toxicity and ethical gaps that underlie much of modern academia and philanthropy . . . with striking social commentary. --Kirkus Reviews A smart, razor-sharp exploration of the precarious island of academic life and the cold unforgiving waters that surround it. --Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather A compelling novel about friendship, education, and purpose, all illustrated through a cast of flawlessly realized characters. --Susan Perabo, author of Why They Run the Way They Do and The Fall of Lisa Bellow Siobhan Phillips's portrait of a stalled would-be academic is thrillingly intimate and ambitious in its scope, evoking at turns Rachel Cusk, Lynn Steger Strong's Want, and Christine Smallwood's The Life of the Mind. Deadpan and dread-filled, shadowed by the specters of war and late capitalism, Benefit probes both the futility and necessity of intellectual work, all in the wry, wise voice of an uncommonly clear-eyed friend. --Jessica Winter, author of Break in Case of Emergency and The Fourth Child

Author Information

Siobhan Phillips is a Rhodes Scholar who studied English Literature at Yale and Oxford Universities and Poetry at the University of East Anglia before earning her PhD in English Language and Literature from Yale. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Boston Review, Artforum, Aeon, and elsewhere. An associate professor of English at Dickinson College, she lives in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Benefit is her first novel.

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