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A review by kjboldon
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
challenging
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.75
This book is weird. Uncategorizable. All along as I read, my mind kept offering up ideas on why it wasn't quite working, on what might've helped make it more cohesive: an indie press, an editor dedicated to the book, not the marketing campaign, if it were a memoir rather than a novel, if it were two novellas, if it were...
Yet this book is also kind of miraculous. To imagine it as otherwise dispels some of its bonkers magic. It portrays the age of Twitter and Trump (I had no issues with her authorial choice to call them The Portal and The Dictator. Both are true, while also universalizing them just a bit, and taking away some power from those overused names) alongside the deep family grief and tragedy of a doomed baby born with Proteus syndrome. It is funny and heartbreaking. It is bizarre and relatable. It is weird and flawed, and yet it's also somewhat wondrous.
I can't recommend it, but I'm glad to have read it. It has left me bemused. Not confused. Unsettled, sometimes entertained. Is it like Virginia Woolf's The Waves but for the ADHD generation? I have questions, but no answers.
Yet this book is also kind of miraculous. To imagine it as otherwise dispels some of its bonkers magic. It portrays the age of Twitter and Trump (I had no issues with her authorial choice to call them The Portal and The Dictator. Both are true, while also universalizing them just a bit, and taking away some power from those overused names) alongside the deep family grief and tragedy of a doomed baby born with Proteus syndrome. It is funny and heartbreaking. It is bizarre and relatable. It is weird and flawed, and yet it's also somewhat wondrous.
I can't recommend it, but I'm glad to have read it. It has left me bemused. Not confused. Unsettled, sometimes entertained. Is it like Virginia Woolf's The Waves but for the ADHD generation? I have questions, but no answers.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Child death