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orla_h 's review for:
Will There Ever Be Another You
by Patricia Lockwood
challenging
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
This is a tricky one to review. There are sentences and whole passages that are things of pure beauty, there are images and metaphors that linger, but they surface and glimmer and bob away on a sea of mostly bewilderment.
Which is perfectly apt for a book about someone who loses their facility for language almost overnight. Why should we, the reader have it any easier? Is this a novel, or autofiction, or an extended prose poem? There are things that happen (that we know really happened) but how much of everything around them is real? I felt like I was floating six inches to the left of myself as I read, which had to be intentional. Lockwood mentions several times that she has given up on writing poetry, but much of this is poetry, snuck in under cover of prose and facts and the malapropisms that are emblematic of her illness.
I started to view this book as though it were a David Lynch movie while I was reading. Just let it all wash over me like a fever dream and let my brain sort it out later. I don't know if there is another, better, way to read it. I'm not sure I could have made it through any other way. And again, that harks back to the point of it all. It's recursive, it can be frustrating, it contains small "Aha!" moments like breadcrumbs or flecks of mica that keep you from feeling utterly lost and stupid as you read. I will hopefully never read Anna Karenina so hard that it almost kills me, but I will remember the coat of violets forever now, perhaps anachronistically coupled with hypebeast boots.
If the fractured nature of her previous book was emblematic of the internet and social media, then the fractured nature of this is that of a brain trying to keep hold of itself and restore its facility with language, which for Lockwood is both trade and identity. All of this (long covid, her husband's illness, still grieving her niece) must have been terrifying, it's a kindness to us that this book isn't.
Huge thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury UK for the chance to read this early in exchange for my honest review.
Which is perfectly apt for a book about someone who loses their facility for language almost overnight. Why should we, the reader have it any easier? Is this a novel, or autofiction, or an extended prose poem? There are things that happen (that we know really happened) but how much of everything around them is real? I felt like I was floating six inches to the left of myself as I read, which had to be intentional. Lockwood mentions several times that she has given up on writing poetry, but much of this is poetry, snuck in under cover of prose and facts and the malapropisms that are emblematic of her illness.
I started to view this book as though it were a David Lynch movie while I was reading. Just let it all wash over me like a fever dream and let my brain sort it out later. I don't know if there is another, better, way to read it. I'm not sure I could have made it through any other way. And again, that harks back to the point of it all. It's recursive, it can be frustrating, it contains small "Aha!" moments like breadcrumbs or flecks of mica that keep you from feeling utterly lost and stupid as you read. I will hopefully never read Anna Karenina so hard that it almost kills me, but I will remember the coat of violets forever now, perhaps anachronistically coupled with hypebeast boots.
If the fractured nature of her previous book was emblematic of the internet and social media, then the fractured nature of this is that of a brain trying to keep hold of itself and restore its facility with language, which for Lockwood is both trade and identity. All of this (long covid, her husband's illness, still grieving her niece) must have been terrifying, it's a kindness to us that this book isn't.
Huge thanks to Net Galley and Bloomsbury UK for the chance to read this early in exchange for my honest review.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Chronic illness
Moderate: Blood, Vomit, Grief, Medical trauma, Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Child death, Alcohol