“I could write that the heady and harrowing The Minimalist is a gothic meditation on the personal and intrapersonal wages and politics of artistic obsession and ambition, equal parts hallucinatory fever dream, bildungsroman, and social critique. I could also write that Kailee Pedersen and her mesmerizing The Minimalist doesn’t f*ck around.” – Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts

“Kailee Pedersen is the Bach of the macabre. The Minimalist is an absolutely haunting chamber piece of psychological horror, an aural gothic tuned to obsessive perfection, where every note climbs up your spine and crescendos in your head. You can nearly hear her chilling symphony rise up from the page.” — Clay McLeod Chapman, author of Wake Up and Open Your Eyes

“Written with a sinister, Nabokovian sumptuousness, this gothic tale of music, doomed love and madness only further cements Kailee Pedersen as one of the best and most original writers of her generation.” — Dan Chaon, author of One of Us

“A memorable mix of stylistic verve, high drama, insider knowledge, and imaginative power.” — Alex Landragin, author of Crossings

For fans of Tár and The Piano Teacher, this gruesome and unsettling psychological drama is a darkly lucid portrait of a classical composer’s descent into madness.

As the last and greatest student of famed minimalist composer Ryder Wakefield, Mia Voss’s rise to prominence in the insular world of classical music has long been assured. When Ryder dies unexpectedly, she inherits everything—including the unfinished manuscript of his final composition, the mysterious Death Fugue: Music for Orchestra.

Haunted by memories of her tragic romance with Ryder’s late son, Oliver—like Mia, an Asian American adoptee—Mia leaves her girlfriend behind and returns to Ryder’s home to finish his last work. There, Mia is forced to confront her complex relationship with Ryder, who hid his Jewish and gay identities to become one of the most important twentieth-century American composers; her lingering guilt over Oliver’s suicide; and her own musical ambition as the manuscript begins to exert a disturbing, mesmerizing hold over her.

Drawn from the author’s own experiences as an adoptee and classical musician, The Minimalist is a harrowing examination of loss, torment, mental illness, self-harm, and artistic self-destruction.

Content Warnings