The Vivisectors
A Novel
by Missouri Williams
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Pub Date May 26 2026 | Archive Date Jun 26 2026
Description
One of Vulture's Most Anticipated Books of 2026
"Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age.” —Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song, winner of the Booker Prize
A reclusive graduate student is forced into a friendship that destabilizes her life in this surreal, allegorical romance.
In a famed but crumbling university city overrun by nature, where power is held in a fragile balance between academics and a contingent of rogue gardeners, the reclusive narrator of The Vivisectors spends her days propping up the career of her needy and fraudulent professor boss. Then a controversy ruptures her careful routine: Adam, a contrarian student and an obsession of the boss, comes into heated conflict with a young professor, with both men claiming discrimination. The crisis subsumes the university, though the narrator is unmoved—not even the attempted suicide of her estranged mother has been enough to dispel her lack of engagement with the world. But when her boss commands her to befriend Adam, the narrator finds herself both caught up in the events threatening to tear the city apart and increasingly drawn to the alluring student at the heart of it all.
Coursing with icy suspense and told with violent precision, The Vivisectors is a new kind of love story for an age of deteriorated communication. With the unsparing style and intellectual ambition that made her award-winning debut The Doloriad a celebrated provocation, Missouri Williams holds a mirror up to humanity’s most intimate contradictions and reflects them back through a novel of profound, spiky spiritual reckoning.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
"Williams’s second novel is as brilliant as it is dark, full of unsettling, revelatory allegory, and frankly unlike anything I’ve read before." —Jasmine Vojdani, Vulture
“In the hypnotic sophomore outing from Williams, a professor’s personal assistant gets drawn into a strange triangle with her boss and a male student . . . Williams is an accomplished stylist, and her writing accrues a magnetic rhythm, calling to mind Clarice Lispector or Marie Redonnet . . . It’s a singular and arresting work.” —Publishers Weekly
“Williams is an heir to writers like Ottessa Moshfegh, whose female protagonists often possess a passivity and an icy detestation of society that teeters on the brink of nihilism . . . A flinty, withholding novel . . . full of dark intelligence.” —Kirkus Reviews
"This is the modern rupture—our crisis of meaning and spiritual malaise shaped into a novel unlike any other. It’s part philosophical allegory, part depth psychology, within a cosmos marked by a profound alienation. Missouri Williams writes with a gothic angularity that puts her in a category of one. She swims in deep waters and surfaces now as a major writer for our age.” —Paul Lynch, author of Prophet Song, winner of the Booker Prize
"The Vivisectors is a novel to marvel at—intricate, utterly precise, unfurling with the same lushness and strange menace of the greenery that creeps over the decaying city of its setting. An original and ingenious work." —Sophie Mackintosh, author of Cursed Bread and The Water Cure
"As I read The Vivisectors, I thought of the dark strangeness of Bruno Schulz and Shirley Jackson, all while experiencing the singular, unbroken, and extraordinary imagination of Missouri Williams." —Amina Cain, author of Indelicacy
“Missouri Williams has paired the remote and mysterious style of the gothic novel with a narrator who you want to know everything about. When she does show her hand it’s like a gift—fun, biting, and wise.” —Zoe Dubno, author of Happiness and Love
"Missouri Williams's stark, sui generis voice returns with another delightfully grotesque, muddy landscape populated by utterly deranged characters who are perfect in the eyes of a freak like me. The anti-feel good hit of the year." —Fernando A. Flores, author of Brother Brontë and Tears of the Trufflepig
"The Vivisectors is an astonishing novel by an astonishing writer. Playful, digressive, and pulsating with existential energy, Missouri Williams' newest contribution harkens back to the roots of the novel, the realms of boundless freedom that characterize the greatest works of eighteenth century literature, and drags them forth to the contemporary moment. It's exhilarating, transcendent even, and speaks to the deep and profound malaise characterizing the modern human experience. I am in awe." —Michael Magee, author of Close to Home
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780374619299 |
| PRICE | $28.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 288 |
Available on NetGalley
Average rating from 28 members
Featured Reviews
Ellen R, Reviewer
A very consuming read, I really enjoyed the flow of this book and the narrator. This book is some really relatable themes like academic drama, career chaos, family drama, and discrimination. Loved the suspense throughout and the way it shows how communication or lack thereof can affect things. I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Review will be posted on Instagram and Amazon on pub day and links added to NetGalley.
Emma S, Reviewer
Although nothing could top the genius of The Doloriad, The Vivisectors held its own as a striking new title.
Bleak, philosophical, and nihilistic — for a book focusing on the meaninglessness of life, it also seeds so much meaning beneath its grim surface.
On the surface, we follow a woman who works for a lazy professor at a university.
The city is an unnamed, deteriorating town in a place we can’t quite pinpoint. The woman acts as a blank slate to the world around her — her motivations murky, her morality ambiguous, her actions random and often cruel.
Similar to The Doloriad, this is a book you experience. Although the prose was easier to grasp with a more “conventional” or conversational flow, by the end, there is a similar sense of dread, a loosening grasp on reality and perception, and a bleak gaze towards the future.
Williams is a master of nihilistic parable and allegory. I love how her writing takes on a sense of breaking the wall between reader and writer — these asides with the gardeners and students acting out theatrical tragedy and comedy, it feels like watching a play unfold, and the text is winking at you. Sometimes dense to get though, but always, ALWAYS worth it. Her books leave me thinking for days, and endlessly rereading and reexamining the rich and expansive symbolism.
Not for everyone, but for those that love dark, philosophical explorations and challenging themes, this is a 5 star read. Williams does it like no other!
Raven S, Reviewer
This was utterly bizarre yet I absolutely dug it.
A mix of dark academia with a kind of surrealism boarding on eco fiction while also maintaining dark and curious themes of communication.
The writing was vivid and crisply presented I found myself lost in its trance.
Ryan D, Reviewer
A female narrator (unnamed until the middle of the book), helps a professor manage an academic career on urban planning in an unnamed city being overrun by surrounding gardens and landscapes. We learn the professor is rich, obese, and emotionally scarred, and our young narrator "assists" the deluded woman fabricate an existence by doing all her work. This story is told with washed out emotions; the narrator loathes her own family except for an uncle she lives with and the entrance hall to the family home is decorated with portraits of past relatives turned backwards. Mom has just tried to off herself and is now a vegetable and much more. Also, there’s a vast population of gardeners that work with military precision and wield incredible power keeping certain areas of the city habitable.
The plot develops but remains secondary to the gorgeously stripped-down prose that excises the extraneous. This is an ideas-driven work and even with a loose, abstract, plot, rich with of analogy, you can’t put it down. The Vivisectors is a towering literary achievement, written with a pen and scalpel. The lack of specifics or pleasantries is refreshing because it allows firm focus on incredible writing. It will lingers after you have finished, and you likely won’t be sure why.
Williams is a young author with incredible skill and vision. Highly recommended to fans of literary fiction or those who savor immaculate writing.
Thanks to NetGalley and MCD for a review copy.
Alex S, Reviewer
A fitting contribution to the "weird girl lit" canon. Williams manages to strategically repel and garner intrigue into the protagonist's psyche. The Vivisectors is one of the most unique and impressive voices I've read in contemporary fiction, the studious backdrop matching the stream of consciousness dedication to conveying macro themes and ideas while making the reader choose where they sit alongside thoughts regarding classism, elitism, nature, power, sex, and gender.
Brynn C, Bookseller
I love a messy relationship. I really do. 'The Vivisectors' has all the complicated feeling of Emily Brontë's 'Wuthering Heights' with the atmosphere of Emily Tesh's 'The Incandescents'. Beautiful!
Chiara M, Book Trade Professional
Missouri Williams is one of the most interesting and promising young British writers working today. While The Doloriad was a strong debut (if perhaps a bit long and occasionally overwritten), The Vivisectors is far more mature and accomplished. The prose is perfectly balanced, and the atmosphere is mastered from start to finish.
I suspect some readers—particularly those looking for a traditional plot—might struggle to get into it, but this is literary fiction at its best. Personally, I loved every bit of it, especially the conversations between the gardeners; they reminded me of the witches in Macbeth.
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