The Millennial Impasse: Novels of a generation’s suspended adulthood

Abstract

Phenomena impacting the trajectory of the millennial generation1 to adulthood—burnout, precarious work, nostalgia, and the expansion of subjecthood into online spaces—have been extensively studied in social and cultural discourse. However, academic explorations of these phenomena as they appear in contemporary novels are sparse. The critical component of this thesis aims to fill this gap in literary scholarship by mapping a generation’s progress to adulthood onto three contemporary novels: Halle Butler’s The New Me (2019), Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation (2018), and Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy (2017). The creative component of this thesis, the first half of novel-in-progress A..