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rae_swabey's review
5.0
I devoured most of this book in a day. It hooked me like a newsfeed and seemed to replicate the same processes in my brain, even as it satirised them.
When something of hers sparked and spread in the portal, it blazed away the morning and afternoon, it blazed like the new California, which we had come to accept as being always on fire. She ran back and forth in the flames, not eating or drinking, emitting a high-pitched sound most humans couldn’t hear. After a while her husband might burst through that wall of swimming red to rescue her, but she would twist away and kick him in the nuts, screaming, “My whole life is in there!” as the day she was standing on broke away and fell into the sea.
It is a book of two halves, the first being a prose-poetry tumble of images, memes, snippets of news stories, in-jokes and interjections of real life that speaks incredibly eloquently about how it feels to live a life dominated by social media. As someone who’s fallen in and out of love with Twitter more than once, insightful, hilarious, and frightening, because yes, that is how my brain feels after a far-longer-than-I-intended scroll.
Why were we all writing like this now? Because a new kind of connection had to be made, and blink, synapse, little space-between was the only way to make it. Or because, and this was more frightening, it was the way the portal wrote.
In the second half of the book, real life bursts in and the way the narrator had been making sense of the world - through a hive mind of shared language, references and tone-policed detachment - no longer cuts it. Gradually, the tone shifts, until we end up in a place where real emotional depths are expressable.
If all she was was funny, and none of this was funny, where did that leave her?
This novel does more to articulate what it means to live in this strange liminal half-online space, its appeal, its culture, its limitations, than anything else I’ve read. The tone and structure - staccato passages, mixed metaphors, deadpan punchlines - perfectly convey the sense-from-chaos/chaos-from-sense feeling of an absent-minded scroll.
When she set the portal down, the Thread tugged her back toward it. She could not help following it. This might be the one that connected everything, that would knit her into an indestructible coherence.
The references are so achingly of-the-moment at the time of writing that they’re already dated - it’s a startlingly accurate snapshot. It talks about this phenomenon, so familiar to us now that it’s like wallpaper yet still culturally relatively unexamined, and it does so in its own language, with wit, affection and bubbling unease.
A groundbreaking book.
When something of hers sparked and spread in the portal, it blazed away the morning and afternoon, it blazed like the new California, which we had come to accept as being always on fire. She ran back and forth in the flames, not eating or drinking, emitting a high-pitched sound most humans couldn’t hear. After a while her husband might burst through that wall of swimming red to rescue her, but she would twist away and kick him in the nuts, screaming, “My whole life is in there!” as the day she was standing on broke away and fell into the sea.
It is a book of two halves, the first being a prose-poetry tumble of images, memes, snippets of news stories, in-jokes and interjections of real life that speaks incredibly eloquently about how it feels to live a life dominated by social media. As someone who’s fallen in and out of love with Twitter more than once, insightful, hilarious, and frightening, because yes, that is how my brain feels after a far-longer-than-I-intended scroll.
Why were we all writing like this now? Because a new kind of connection had to be made, and blink, synapse, little space-between was the only way to make it. Or because, and this was more frightening, it was the way the portal wrote.
In the second half of the book, real life bursts in and the way the narrator had been making sense of the world - through a hive mind of shared language, references and tone-policed detachment - no longer cuts it. Gradually, the tone shifts, until we end up in a place where real emotional depths are expressable.
If all she was was funny, and none of this was funny, where did that leave her?
This novel does more to articulate what it means to live in this strange liminal half-online space, its appeal, its culture, its limitations, than anything else I’ve read. The tone and structure - staccato passages, mixed metaphors, deadpan punchlines - perfectly convey the sense-from-chaos/chaos-from-sense feeling of an absent-minded scroll.
When she set the portal down, the Thread tugged her back toward it. She could not help following it. This might be the one that connected everything, that would knit her into an indestructible coherence.
The references are so achingly of-the-moment at the time of writing that they’re already dated - it’s a startlingly accurate snapshot. It talks about this phenomenon, so familiar to us now that it’s like wallpaper yet still culturally relatively unexamined, and it does so in its own language, with wit, affection and bubbling unease.
A groundbreaking book.
annivalo's review against another edition
3.0
- tuntuu hankalalta sanoittaa tätä. vivahteikas, nopeatempoinen, hämmentävä, vahvasti kiinni tässä ajassa. hauska ja surullinen!
- internet, vanhemmuus, perhe, tragedia…. asiasanojenkin nostaminen vaikeaa, ei spoilereita tänne heh
- internet, vanhemmuus, perhe, tragedia…. asiasanojenkin nostaminen vaikeaa, ei spoilereita tänne heh
tealord's review
sad
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Terminal illness
prof_sarah's review
funny
informative
lighthearted
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
sineaderoo's review
emotional
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
5.0
This begins as a funny, cheeky, fragmented wander through online life and turns into something quite different half way through when the reality of real life family tragedy forces our protagonist into offline life in a new way.
Written in a mixture of beautiful poetic prose and meme banality, this made me laugh out loud and cry in public.
The most effective attempt I've read to capture what the endless scroll feels like in a book.
Written in a mixture of beautiful poetic prose and meme banality, this made me laugh out loud and cry in public.
The most effective attempt I've read to capture what the endless scroll feels like in a book.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death
leanne_who_reads's review against another edition
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
arianeanindita's review
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
mysterious
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
I’ve never been more shattered by reading anything in my life, Patricia Lockwood is TRULY a singular voice
saintakim's review
3.0
Portrait of a Educated White Lady on Twitter.
Il y en a beaucoup de ce genre en ce moment.
Il y en a beaucoup de ce genre en ce moment.
bibliocyclist's review
4.0
When you choose your next book, do you aim to be jarred? As you wade through a sea of uncertain terms, do you ask yourself which fresh words, which modified definitions are worth stealing? What if Ducks, Newburyport were readable? What if it were good? Do these sound like the ingredients of a literary feast that you would order? If so, check out No One Is Talking About This, the spicy post-genre debut novel from celebrated poet and essayist Patricia Lockwood. From the opening line of the opening page, Lockwood tosses you right in with the viscera to an ambiguous linguistic stew. Is childhood “the place where you sounded like yourself”? What do we do when “let me go” becomes the order, while “what the body says is No”? The stew grows into a body of great depths, a Lake Baikal against the vast gray puddles of its lessers. We tread soupy water, we flail, we sink or swim. Paddling the page, you believe that Lockwood speaks directly to you, that Lockwood could perhaps be you, if only you were a genius. We emerge. We fling ourselves finally onto land, fortunate to have read this book in its time, like a Jazz Age encounter with Jay Gatsby or a party invitation to the Dalloways’. Indeed this may be our condensed Ulysses. Indulge with the intent to savor.