No One Is Talking About This
Ratings106
Average rating3.8
People throw around the term "digital native" as if it's the province of particular generations (another fake idea), but Lockwood's character here is the ur-digital native, a person whose whole existence is mediated by the Portal's idiom.
As a person who considered herself terminally online for a period of time, and made her living from the vicissitudes of "content creation" before it was tagged with that name, there was a lot to identify with here. The push and pull between the Portal and the Real in the latter half of the book seems to come as a surprise to the protagonist but the rest of us saw it coming and, in my case, were filled with dread.
This one was weird. At times interesting, funny, emotional, and poignant — but very weird. The back cover calls it “genre-defying,” which feels right. I'd say this sits somewhere between poetry, satire, and internet speak. It's a novel made up of nearly schizophrenic, barely linear fragments of internet culture: a little bit of everything all of the time. But then towards the middle it starts dovetailing into a family drama, which feels like a departure from the earlier part of the book. Some really quotable lines throughout.
Jeg er virkelig usikker. Dette har vært en unormalt krevende konsentrasjonsøvelsue på tross av korte avsnitt og ganske så enkelt, lyrisk og elokvent språk. Jeg vet at det handler om livet i en portal, og om hvordan det er å leve i nærheten av noen som har barn med proteus-syndrom, et syndrom jeg aldri har betegnelsen på før, men som jeg har sett i den strålende filmen “Elefantmannen” med Anthony Hopkins. Det litterære dilemmaet skal være gåten skjerm/virkelig liv og jeg forstår det gjennom konsentrasjon. Samtidig blir det springende, språklige hopp og sprett som jeg ofte liker hos andre forfattere, men som i denne innpakningen gjør at jeg mister nerven, det som skaper det dype engasjementet for hovedpersonene - helt til del to, hvor småbarnet med proteussyndromet tar over plassen som hovedperson - og da forstår jeg hvorfor andre liker dette så godt. For min egen del ble det nok litt for spesielt, og flinkheten i den kreative utfoldelsen blir nettopp det: For flinkt.
In the first part of this book there's an obvious comparison to be made to Jenny Offill's writing with its short, interlinked paragraphs, but the motives feel different. This is more like a printout of a Twitter feed than a considered collection of vignettes. The second part is a grief memoir and it took me by surprise because the shift in tone was so dramatic, but it becomes something quite beautiful once you've settled into it. As a whole, this is a story about how the internet has taken over our lives and the few brief intervals of respite we get from it when ‘real life' intervenes. It's painfully of the moment, and prompts us to consider what's more important in life - actual human contact, or the bizarre and fleeting internet notoriety that so many people seem to crave these days.
This book is so extremely of its time. Curious to re-read this in a decade or so to see if it has aged like the rageface meme or rather like the Old Economy Steve meme.
What a remarkable and moving book. It is one of the funniest books I have read in a long time, without being cynical or snarky. You will both laugh and cry. It is an incisive snapshot of the contemporary mind and experience of the world, relationships, and human difficulties that transcend all technological epochs. Through the lens and filter of our unique media and technological eccentricities, Lockwood gives us a meditation and celebration of what it means to be human underneath and behind all of the posts, likes, and stories. It is neither an indictment of our social media-obsessed age, nor a fetishization of it. Simply a poignant exploration of its limits and the parts of the human soul and experience it cannot adequately capture, share, nor affect. I cannot recommend this book more highly, especially to all of my fellow millennials trying to find meaning and rest in our current age.
The narrator's world in the first part of this book is dominated by “The Portal,” a social media platform where people get their news and spend time interacting with others. The portal is a kind of parallel society with its own standards of behavior, of what is funny or interesting or appropriate. The narrator is a sort of expert or representative resident of the portal who is in demand around the world for her talks about the world of the portal. I labeled this book Dystopia because of the portal, where the things people say and do are harsh, crass, loud, nonsensical–and where harshness, crassness, loudness, and nonsensicality seem to be encouraged and applauded. There is also reference to a dictator and authoritarian policies recently enacted that may sound familiar to people who have lived through the 2017-2021 Trump administration.
Midway through the book, a change occurs. The narrator steps back from the portal and becomes more connected to people. The harshness of language and behavior recedes in the presence of some harsh reality. I have to admit I felt MUCH more sympathetic to the narrator in this part of the book.
No One is Talking About This is written in brief, disconnected paragraphs–a little long for most social media platforms, but short for a novel. Sometimes the paragraphs flow together and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the paragraphs are opaque and sometimes they are highly accessible. There are beautiful sentences and sensitive observations all the way through. The style makes it easy to read the book quickly, so whether you love it or not, it won't take long to read. I didn't love it, though I appreciated Patricia Lockwood's ability to make the portal into such a hellscape that I thought seriously about closing my social media accounts.
i really really liked this...i feel like i read it at an important time in my life and man... every chronically online bitch needs to read this
Hilarious in ways I didn't know books could be - tweet-like vignettes - that give way to a deeply moving, heartbreaking set of experiences that awed me
3,5*
I kinda got what this book was trying to do, by the formatting and language at least. But I didn't really get it story wise.
I liked the vibes and the more postmodern form, but I really had to push myself to finish it and this book is really short!
Well, wanted to read it because of Women's Prize and I did! Have to decide if I'll keep it or sell it.
This felt like two books - I really liked the first one, it was weird and meta and some seriously great commentary. The style didn't carry over well to the second half, and I found myself struggling to maintain interest in it. This had potential, but i don't think it fully achieved what it set out to do.
I couldn't get into the extremely online first portion, but then the second half came and
“The words merry Christmas were now hurled like a challenge. They no longer meant newborn kings, or the dangling silver notes of a sleigh ride, or high childish hopes for snow. They meant “Do you accept Herr Santa as the all-powerful leader of the new white ethnostate?”
The book is rich with these perfect digressions and Patricia Lockwood gets a ton of leeway for writing the absolutely fantastic Priestdaddy ...but this reads like an advanced AI was fed Twitter posts and Reddit memes and forced to regurgitate a tragicomic novel.
Lockwood is a Grand Master Twitter user and there is no shortage of fragmentary emissions here that will elicit an ahahahahaha! (the newer, funnier way to laugh - don't ask me about sneazing) But you still have to read this like a novel and not the endless doom-scrolling consumption the internet invites. And I think that's what broke me.
Besides, it's hard to keep up with the online easter eggs. While some memes like the “this is fine” dog can reach ubiquitous status so that even the normies on Facebook are gleefully reposting it as a reaction to the last year, most bits of online ephemera never rise above their brief, blazing week of relevance. We're all ants now? Big Hero 6 suddenly relevant? What's up with Ocean Spray Cranberry juice or Gorilla Glue? Is everyone eating ass now?
And just as Twitter can foster an endless stream of hot takes, irreverent shit-posts and ironic trolling it can just as quickly offer up flashes of sincerity and heart. Here too the book switches gears in the second half when the protagonist's sister's baby is diagnosed with Proteus syndrome - mirroring Lockwood's neice's condition that would ultimately take her life at 6 months of age.
Lockwood is momentarily seized with doubt “If all she was was funny, and none of this was funny, where did that leave her?” The endless scroll turns stream of consciousness and you remember that before she was writing enigmatic tweets like “can a dog be twins” Lockwood was a poet and memoirist of the highest order. The book didn't fire on all cylinders for me but I will still pick up anything she writes.
One to continue to think on leaving me unsure how to rate this!
Part 1 - I almost abandoned the book. I thought maybe I was too old to understand.
Part 2 - Helped me understand the point of Part 1. And broke my heart.
I DNF'd this book because I couldn't get into it. This is more of a note for future me when I wonder why I didn't finish it. I'm sure the book is good, as multiple critics have said, but I couldn't get past the disjointed tweet-like format. I'm sure the tweets made more sense as you read on but I didn't get that far. I may try it again with fresh eyes.
I don't know how to review this. Real, published, reviewer have already done a pretty great job with that so I will get personal and say:
This was amazing. It broke me out of my reading slump, made me grateful that I go out of my way to avoid most social media and I LAUGHED OUT LOUD-OFTEN.
At the same time, it is split into parts and reads like two very different books. I already loved part one, which was like jumping on a Twitter exchange with the smartest, funniest people in the world discussing something you had no idea happened (my actual experience with Twitter) but then skewing that over hot flames. But Part Two is the one of the best damned stories I ever read about a family that comes together in a time of need. Virtual life v reality. Both are beautiful and suck.
I loved this. I have no doubt it will win all sorts of awards (and be deserving of them).
A truly funny and equally aching book. Lockwood has mastered a style of writing that is both satirical and deeply affecting at once. The lightness and frivolity of part I made the tragedy of part II even more impactful. I loved it but a lot of that is probably heavily to blame on the fact that I have voluntarily and irreversibly poisoned my own brain so badly by spending hours of my precious life on twitter dot com!
She remembered the peculiar onrushing pain of the portal, where everything was happening except for this. But for now, the previous unshakable conviction that someone else was writing the inside of her head was gone.
No One Is Talking About This
