Scan barcode
A review by archytas
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
"We reveled in these stories, which were not untrue. But there was some untruth in the degree to which they comforted us."
The first half of this fairly exceptional book is a savage critique of social media, and the unreality that becomes a world. Lockwood is skilled at the epigram, and the one-liners come thick and fast. The writing style bombards the reader, in a style deliberately designed to evoke the endless stimulation of the scroll, with references to meme culture, subtweets, polarised wars and the ways the in-references are cycled and recycled. It's clever, but it is all just too much and too long, and then just when you think this book is drastically overhyped, you hit the second half.
The second half has (a little) more space to breathe. It aches with joy and loss and love, and Lockwood seeks to convey how the most moving things are not reducible to pat descriptions or quips:
"The cursor blinked where her mind was. She put one true word after another and put the words in the portal. All at once they were not true, not as true as she could have made them. Where was the fiction? Distance, arrangement, emphasis, proportion? Did they only become untrue when they entered someone else’s life and butted, trivial, up against its bigness?"
Our protagonist tries to reconcile her community online ('in the portal') with this and shifts as a person, to a place both less and more grounded. This is, in the end, a morality tale - which for this reader - lay at the heart of the book's paradox: in a cry for meaning, too much here was simplified into truisms: online is unreal, meaning is in family connection - that the book had too much of the packaged emptyness it was attempting to critique. There is little meaningful exploration of the warmth and community found in social media alongside the distraction and packaging.
"“I know what you’re going through,” she said silently to the baby, “but sometimes you’ll be scrolling along, and NASA will post a picture of the stars.”"
The first half of this fairly exceptional book is a savage critique of social media, and the unreality that becomes a world. Lockwood is skilled at the epigram, and the one-liners come thick and fast. The writing style bombards the reader, in a style deliberately designed to evoke the endless stimulation of the scroll, with references to meme culture, subtweets, polarised wars and the ways the in-references are cycled and recycled. It's clever, but it is all just too much and too long, and then just when you think this book is drastically overhyped, you hit the second half.
The second half has (a little) more space to breathe. It aches with joy and loss and love, and Lockwood seeks to convey how the most moving things are not reducible to pat descriptions or quips:
"The cursor blinked where her mind was. She put one true word after another and put the words in the portal. All at once they were not true, not as true as she could have made them. Where was the fiction? Distance, arrangement, emphasis, proportion? Did they only become untrue when they entered someone else’s life and butted, trivial, up against its bigness?"
Our protagonist tries to reconcile her community online ('in the portal') with this and shifts as a person, to a place both less and more grounded. This is, in the end, a morality tale - which for this reader - lay at the heart of the book's paradox: in a cry for meaning, too much here was simplified into truisms: online is unreal, meaning is in family connection - that the book had too much of the packaged emptyness it was attempting to critique. There is little meaningful exploration of the warmth and community found in social media alongside the distraction and packaging.
"“I know what you’re going through,” she said silently to the baby, “but sometimes you’ll be scrolling along, and NASA will post a picture of the stars.”"
Content Warnings
Graphic: Miscarriage and Child death
Moderate: Abortion