Reviews with content warning for Child death - No One Is Talking About This

I LOVE Patricia Lockwood’s writing. I think I said this when in reviewed Priestdaddy - you can tell she’s a poet - and here I want to say “even when she’s writing ridiculous one-line tweets like, ‘can a dog be twins?’” but it’s more like you can tell she’s a poet BECAUSE of stuff like that. She can distill things down to something like that. She’s kind of a genius.

The most perfect part of the book is towards the end, when she lists a bunch of things she wants to explain to her infant niece who is not expected to live to be a year old. I want to put the whole list in here because it’s just so evocative of LIFE but here’s a chunk: “first library card; new lipstick; a toe going numb for two months because you wore borrowed shoes to a friend’s
wedding; Thursday; October; “She’s Like the Wind” in a dentist’s office; driver’s license picture where you look like a killer; getting your bathing suit back on after you go to the bathroom”

And it’s a thinly veiled memoir so if you’ve read Priestdaddy, you’ll know all the characters which made it more affecting.

It’s a quick read that I read on an emotional visit to the house I grew up in and I cried and cried at the end one the bedroom that was my little sister’s until I moved out and she took my room.

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lucyka's review against another edition

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2.0

Disappointed. The fragmented style was hard to read, the idea of the 'portal' never really made any point and then a random intense tragedy was thrown in halfway through as some kind of emotional blackmail. Honestly the more I think about it the worse it was.

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megantall's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Obliterated me. Oh, life.

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vaughantay's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

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poppyfitzclark's review against another edition

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emotional funny hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

Experimental and written almost entirely in a series of short tweet-like poems. Could not put this down and cried through the end. Interesting reflection on the way life is lived online and how it bleeds into the “real world” and vice versa.

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americattt's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

“Her sister's husband went to a garage sale one afternoon and purchased like fifty Beanie Babies. This, too, was one of the remedies for grief. Someone had sat them on little stools in their display cases, so they would not get tired—of what?—of the long direct daylight of being Beanie Babies. Someone had cared for them. Perhaps everyone was a god with their eye on some small sparrow. Perhaps everyone was the collector of some soft rare commemorative, stitched with a visible heart and worth millions on millions in the mind.”

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rebracketing's review against another edition

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emotional funny reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

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