Suzanne Perez

Early on in Beatriz Serrano's cutting and satirical debut novel Discontent, we learn that 30-something main character Marissa has already had it with corporate life.

The truth is, I don't know how to do anything, and I don't know how I got here, she says.

I suppose it was by perfecting the office game until everybody believed I was a great professional.

Marissa has risen through the ranks at a successful advertising agency, but she hates her job and everyone at it.

She spends most of her working hours either locked in her office, hiding from coworkers, or racing around in an attempt to look busy.

What she really does, though, is pawn off any actual assignments to her personal assistant or the advertising students in her master's program class so she can watch YouTube videos in her office or escape to her favorite art museum.

At the museum, in a drug-induced buzz,

Marissa contemplates the meaning of life while staring at paintings by Hieronymus Bosch.

If this novel sounds a bit like Otessa Moshfegh's My Year of Rest and Relaxation, it's because it very much is.

Both Moshfegh and Serrano explore the depths of millennial ennui, with characters who live lives of extreme privilege but battle relentless and, at times annoying, existential dread.

Both authors also master the art of dark humor with writing that deftly navigates the line between grim and hilarious.

When mentors advise Marissa to fake it till you make it, she responds with her own version of the rule.

Fake it until people leave you alone.

Discontent was written in Spanish and translated for English audiences by Mara Faye Letham.

Nothing is lost in translation here because Serrano's cutting wit, like the cheesiness of those inspirational office posters, transcends the boundaries of culture.

When Marissa gripes about TED Talks that implore you to follow your dreams, or that boss who treats employees like teenage kids, I believe in you.

You can do hard things.

I know you won't disappoint me.

We are all nodding and rolling our eyes, no matter the language.

Woven amid the office space narrative are enjoyable side characters who underscore the humor, if not the actual plot.