No One Is Talking About This
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2021 and the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021
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3.7 • 24 Ratings
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
* WILL THERE EVER BE ANOTHER YOU, THE LATEST SENSATION FROM PATRICIA LOCKWOOD, OUT NOW *
'Patricia Lockwood is the voice of a generation' Namita Gokhale
'A masterpiece' Guardian
'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney
'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail
'I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book' David Sedaris
'A rare wonder . . . I was left in bits' Douglas Stuart
* WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2022 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 *
* SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 *
* A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK *
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This is a story about a life lived in two halves.
It's about what happens when real life collides with the increasing absurdity of a world accessed through a screen.
It's about living in world that contains both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
It's a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time.
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'An utterly distinctive mixture of depth, dazzling linguistic richness, anarchic wit and raw emotional candour' Rowan Williams
A 2021 Book of the Year: Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Evening Standard, The Times, New Statesman, Red, Observer, Independent, Daily Telegraph
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Lockwood's debut novel comes packed with the humor, bawdiness, and lyrical insight that buoyed her memoir Priestdaddy. The unnamed narrator made famous by a viral post that read, "Can a dog be twins" travels the world to speak on panels, where she explains such things as why it's better to use the spelling "sneazing" (it's "objectively funnier"). While in Vienna for a conference, her mother urges her to come home to Ohio, where the narrator's younger sister is having complications with her pregnancy and may need a late-term abortion. There, in the book's shimmering second half, the internet jokes continue between the sisters as a means of coping with uncertainty, and resonate with the theme of life's ephemerality vs. the internet's infinitude. Throughout, a fragmented style captures and sometimes elevates a series of text messages and memes amid the meditations on family ("I'm convinced the world is getting too full lol, her brother texted her, the one who obliterated himself at the end of every day with a personal comet called Fireball"). This mighty novel screams with laughter just as it wallops with grief.
Customer Reviews
A little disappointing
Author
American poet, essayist, memoirist. Writes mostly about the internet, by which I mean social media. Much loved by the NY literati. This is her first novel.
In brief
A book in two parts, cleverly called Part One and Part Two. In the former, Ms L waxes (and wanes) lyrical about the life of the unnamed protagonist as an influencer/fount of memes on social media, Twitter basically, except she calls it "The Portal," presumably to minimise the possibility of law suits from Jack (Dorsey). The narrative involves a series of short, clever, sometimes extremely funny snippets related largely to memes dating mostly from 2018 as best as I can tell (when she was writing the book I presume). It draws heavily on a long non-fiction piece the author published in the London Review of Books. The writing style is similar, if a little more detailed and reflective, in Part Two as the protagonist focuses on her niece, who is identified as severely handicapped while still in utero, and the legal issues regarding abortion, the complexity of care, the effect on families yada, yada.
Writing
If you like your novels to have a plot, then look elsewhere. This is a wide ranging rumination where apparently unconnected stuff isn't quite as unconnected as you first thought, except when it is. There's some incisive and witty commentary on life under pervasive social media, probably much more than I, a non-user of social media, appreciated. The contrast between the two parts demonstrates changes required when "things get real" in your life, and possibly other things that went over my head.
Bottom line
Ms L's style is unconventional, but the trope of the major health issue involving a child is hardly new in literature. Much of the lighter material already feels a little dated, and will get exponentially more so very quickly IMHO.
Self-Indulgent Rubbish
Drivel, complete and utter drivel.