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A review by thebobsphere
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
4.0
Lately I’ve been watching The Netflix series, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. For those who do not know what it’s about, the premise is simple: a teenager is kidnapped in the 90’s and kept in a bunker for 15 years in a doomsday cult. When she emerges, Kimmy discovers that the world has changed, especially with the World Wide Web becoming a fixture of society. Throughout the four seasons there are tons of references to memes, internet celebrities or people who were called out through the internet, at times Kimmy learns that it is a powerful tool.
In a way, Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking about this follows the same meme overload. The book is structured like a Twitter feed and each paragraph contains a nod to a gif, meme, Reddit story or Twitter thread. Some references you’ll get, some you won’t. I had to consult Google quite a bit.
The book is divided into two sections, the first part is about an influencer who spends most of her day on the internet , here called The Portal, hence the multitude of internet culture in jokes. The narrator also travels around the world talking about The wonders of The Portal as well.
For those who think that this section is just the author showing off, it’s an incorrect assumption. The memes and gifs all capture the internet zeitgeist, it also displays how the current generation think, even the book’s use of tweet sized paragraph embraces this new way of communicating. Patricia Lockwood is making a statement – on the lines of ‘this is the current generation. This is what we’ve got and this is how we are going to use it’. As an aside there are hints that social media use helped with Trump’s election so things are not presented that optimistically.
There’s more though because Patricia Lockwood is also showing us that it is easy to get sucked in The Portal world and ignore reality.
Thus what would happen is a real life situation occurs? will the portal world keep us sucked in.
That is what the second half of the book is about.
The narrator’s sister gives birth to a child with Proteus Syndrome. Despite the tough birth, in which the narrator merges with a couple of memes. The child survives and the narrator starts to bond with it, shedding the false world. If one thought that Lockwood can only deliver soulless, reference heavy passages, think again? the aunt/niece paragraphs are some of the sweetest passages in the book. One can feel the love that the narrator is cultivating. This relationship is further developed but i’ll let you read that. All that I’ll say is that it gets pretty emotional.
As someone who is Gen Z (actually I’m part of the lost generation but there’s no need to go into specifics) I thought it would be difficult to understand all the subtexts but No One is Talking about this adds an emotional element to the book, especially in the more ‘human’ second half and this gives the book an extra dimension.
Will No One is Talking about this divide readers? – the answer is most definitely. However, I will say that I can see a lot of younger authors using this format. Already the bite sized paragraph is gaining popularity, but what makes this book something of it’s era is that it uses elements of internet culture to explain salient points – Toxic masculinity, feminism and sexual liberation are underlying topics in the memes mentioned and THAT is what I think younger writers will pick up on. To my knowledge Patricia Lockwood is the first author to use memes in order to put across big points and, although in ten years time they may be forgotten I am sure there will be a steady stream of authors keeping up this style.
In a way, Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking about this follows the same meme overload. The book is structured like a Twitter feed and each paragraph contains a nod to a gif, meme, Reddit story or Twitter thread. Some references you’ll get, some you won’t. I had to consult Google quite a bit.
The book is divided into two sections, the first part is about an influencer who spends most of her day on the internet , here called The Portal, hence the multitude of internet culture in jokes. The narrator also travels around the world talking about The wonders of The Portal as well.
For those who think that this section is just the author showing off, it’s an incorrect assumption. The memes and gifs all capture the internet zeitgeist, it also displays how the current generation think, even the book’s use of tweet sized paragraph embraces this new way of communicating. Patricia Lockwood is making a statement – on the lines of ‘this is the current generation. This is what we’ve got and this is how we are going to use it’. As an aside there are hints that social media use helped with Trump’s election so things are not presented that optimistically.
There’s more though because Patricia Lockwood is also showing us that it is easy to get sucked in The Portal world and ignore reality.
Thus what would happen is a real life situation occurs? will the portal world keep us sucked in.
That is what the second half of the book is about.
The narrator’s sister gives birth to a child with Proteus Syndrome. Despite the tough birth, in which the narrator merges with a couple of memes. The child survives and the narrator starts to bond with it, shedding the false world. If one thought that Lockwood can only deliver soulless, reference heavy passages, think again? the aunt/niece paragraphs are some of the sweetest passages in the book. One can feel the love that the narrator is cultivating. This relationship is further developed but i’ll let you read that. All that I’ll say is that it gets pretty emotional.
As someone who is Gen Z (actually I’m part of the lost generation but there’s no need to go into specifics) I thought it would be difficult to understand all the subtexts but No One is Talking about this adds an emotional element to the book, especially in the more ‘human’ second half and this gives the book an extra dimension.
Will No One is Talking about this divide readers? – the answer is most definitely. However, I will say that I can see a lot of younger authors using this format. Already the bite sized paragraph is gaining popularity, but what makes this book something of it’s era is that it uses elements of internet culture to explain salient points – Toxic masculinity, feminism and sexual liberation are underlying topics in the memes mentioned and THAT is what I think younger writers will pick up on. To my knowledge Patricia Lockwood is the first author to use memes in order to put across big points and, although in ten years time they may be forgotten I am sure there will be a steady stream of authors keeping up this style.