Having memes lyrically described in such a high level of detail-let alone printed and bound in an actual book-had the strange effect of making me keenly aware of the Internet’s absurdist tendencies.
In an interview with John Lanchester from the London Review of Books, Lanchester comments on Lockwood’s remarkable control of tone that gives her “permission to say anything.” The book traverses subject matter that is simultaneously profound, obscure, vulgar and hilarious, filtering through beautiful and freakishly rendered images in a way that resembles getting lost down an Internet rabbit hole. Lockwood shows us how, as an intangible but ever-expanding entity, the Internet has become an inextricable part of our collective reality. The sentences themselves are like beautifully formed pearls-‘ In Vienna the little cakes looked like the big buildings, or else the big buildings looked like the little cakes,’-but the text is broken up into short paragraphs that barely seem to relate to each other.Īs the novel progressed, I realised this stylistic choice was made to emulate how information is often presented online in a never-ending stream of information. The prose is so fragmented that any sense of narrative progression is barely detectable. Reading this book, I wasn’t sure if I could continue after the first few pages. However, a complication with her sister’s pregnancy draws her home and the subsequent lived experience she has with a niece born with Proteus Syndrome causes a drastic shift in her relationship with online space. The novel’s protagonist is a woman who has become famous for an innocuous viral tweet-loosely inspired by Lockwood’s own participation in the forming of ‘weird Twitter’-which leads to her travelling the world, speaking as an authority on digital communication. It's a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time.American poet Patricia Lockwood’s debut fiction novel No One Is Talking About This discusses how we position ourselves in relation to the Internet. 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 about what happens when real life collides with the increasing absurdity of a world accessed through a screen. 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 * _ This is a story about a life lived in two halves. '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.
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