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A review by asurasantosha
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
So, I'm pretty convinced this book is highly rated almost entirely because of the second part of the book. The second part of this book has a plot and it has depth and emotion. The second part is something a reader could imagine, place themselves into, possibly relate to. Perhaps that's just my take because I've had an extremely similar life experience to the story told in the second half of this book. Except my own nephew was in this world for eight years before we had to say good bye in nearly the exact same way. I felt like when they were saying goodbye to baby in the hospital, I was reading about my own experience.
Outside of the redeeming bits of Part 2, I did not enjoy this book. The first part doesn't in any way feel like a novel to me. It's almost a long series of thought vomit. It was so hard to follow any plot, events, storylines. I am in fact still not convinced any of this book is a novel. It might be prose poetry. There are some beautiful, lyrical, or thought-provoking quotes in this book. There are a great many of them in fact. Some of the individual lines are genius and really make you think. I just wasn't a fan of the experiemental-ness of the format. I don't like when the word "novel" is on the cover, and there is a summary on the back about the "story", except there is no story and you don't feel like you're reading a novel at all for the first 60% of the book.
The fact that part one and part two felt so completely different from one another was another lost point from me. I think I get what she was going for, but part one was just so long and so nearly unbearable. I considered dnf-ing this book multiple times.
So if you really like lyricism in books, don't care about plot or characters. Like literature that's quite philosophical, don't mind taking a long while to get somewhere in a book, you will probably like this one.
If you are impatient for things to happen, like getting attached to or invested in characters, love a good storyline, and care more about pacing than descriptions, maybe skip this one.
Outside of the redeeming bits of Part 2, I did not enjoy this book. The first part doesn't in any way feel like a novel to me. It's almost a long series of thought vomit. It was so hard to follow any plot, events, storylines. I am in fact still not convinced any of this book is a novel. It might be prose poetry. There are some beautiful, lyrical, or thought-provoking quotes in this book. There are a great many of them in fact. Some of the individual lines are genius and really make you think. I just wasn't a fan of the experiemental-ness of the format. I don't like when the word "novel" is on the cover, and there is a summary on the back about the "story", except there is no story and you don't feel like you're reading a novel at all for the first 60% of the book.
The fact that part one and part two felt so completely different from one another was another lost point from me. I think I get what she was going for, but part one was just so long and so nearly unbearable. I considered dnf-ing this book multiple times.
So if you really like lyricism in books, don't care about plot or characters. Like literature that's quite philosophical, don't mind taking a long while to get somewhere in a book, you will probably like this one.
If you are impatient for things to happen, like getting attached to or invested in characters, love a good storyline, and care more about pacing than descriptions, maybe skip this one.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child death and Sexual content