![Patricia Lockwood - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B009JWA0Y6.jpg)
No One Is Talking About This: A Novel
FINALIST FOR THE 2021 BOOKER PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
"A book that reads like a prose poem, at once sublime, profane, intimate, philosophical, witty and, eventually, deeply moving." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"Wow. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book. What an inventive and startling writer…I'm so glad I read this. I really think this book is remarkable." -David Sedaris
From "a formidably gifted writer" (The New York Times Book Review), a book that asks: Is there life after the internet?
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"
Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong," and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.
FINALIST FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE
FINALIST FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE
"A book that reads like a prose poem, at once sublime, profane, intimate, philosophical, witty and, eventually, deeply moving." -New York Times Book Review, Editors' Choice
"Wow. I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book. What an inventive and startling writer…I'm so glad I read this. I really think this book is remarkable." -David Sedaris
From "a formidably gifted writer" (The New York Times Book Review), a book that asks: Is there life after the internet?
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats--from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness--begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. "Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"
Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong," and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.
Editorial Reviews
Part One
She opened the portal, and the mind met her more than halfway. Inside, it was tropical and snowing, and the first flake of the blizzard of everything landed on her tongue and melted.
Close-ups of nail art, a pebble from outer space, a tarantula's compound eyes, a storm like canned peaches on the surface of Jupiter, Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, a chihuahua perched on a man's erection, a garage door -spray-painted with the words STOP! DON'T EMAIL MY WIFE!
Why did the portal feel so private, when you only entered it when you needed to be everywhere?
She felt along the solid green marble of the day for the hairline crack that might let her out. This could not be forced. Outside, the air hung swagged and the clouds sat in piles of couch stuffing, and in the south of the sky there was a tender spot, where a rainbow wanted to happen.
Then three sips of coffee, and a window opened.
I'm convinced the world is getting too full lol, her brother texted her, the one who obliterated himself at the end of every day with a personal comet called Fireball.
Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money. Slowly, slowly, she found herself moving toward a position so philosophical even Jesus couldn't have held it: that she must hate capitalism while at the same time loving film montages set in department stores.
Politics! The trouble was that they had a dictator now, which, according to some people (white), they had never had before, and according to other people (everyone else), they had only ever been having, constantly, since the beginning of the world. Her stupidity panicked her, as well as the way her voice now sounded when she talked to people who hadn't stopped being stupid yet.
The problem was that the dictator was very funny, which had maybe always been true of all dictators. Absurdism, she thought. Suddenly all those Russian novels where a man turns into a teaspoonful of blackberry jam at a country house began to make sense.
What had the beautiful thought been, the bright profundity she had roused herself to write down? She opened her notebook with the sense of anticipation she always felt on such -occasions-perhaps this would finally be it, the one they would chisel on her gravestone. It read:
chuck e cheese can munch a hole in my -youknow-what
After you died, she thought as she carefully washed her legs under the fine needles of water, for she had recently learned that some people didn't, you would see a little pie chart that told you how much of your life had been spent in the shower arguing with people you had never met. Oh but like that was somehow less worthy than spending your time care...
She opened the portal, and the mind met her more than halfway. Inside, it was tropical and snowing, and the first flake of the blizzard of everything landed on her tongue and melted.
Close-ups of nail art, a pebble from outer space, a tarantula's compound eyes, a storm like canned peaches on the surface of Jupiter, Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, a chihuahua perched on a man's erection, a garage door -spray-painted with the words STOP! DON'T EMAIL MY WIFE!
Why did the portal feel so private, when you only entered it when you needed to be everywhere?
She felt along the solid green marble of the day for the hairline crack that might let her out. This could not be forced. Outside, the air hung swagged and the clouds sat in piles of couch stuffing, and in the south of the sky there was a tender spot, where a rainbow wanted to happen.
Then three sips of coffee, and a window opened.
I'm convinced the world is getting too full lol, her brother texted her, the one who obliterated himself at the end of every day with a personal comet called Fireball.
Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money. Slowly, slowly, she found herself moving toward a position so philosophical even Jesus couldn't have held it: that she must hate capitalism while at the same time loving film montages set in department stores.
Politics! The trouble was that they had a dictator now, which, according to some people (white), they had never had before, and according to other people (everyone else), they had only ever been having, constantly, since the beginning of the world. Her stupidity panicked her, as well as the way her voice now sounded when she talked to people who hadn't stopped being stupid yet.
The problem was that the dictator was very funny, which had maybe always been true of all dictators. Absurdism, she thought. Suddenly all those Russian novels where a man turns into a teaspoonful of blackberry jam at a country house began to make sense.
What had the beautiful thought been, the bright profundity she had roused herself to write down? She opened her notebook with the sense of anticipation she always felt on such -occasions-perhaps this would finally be it, the one they would chisel on her gravestone. It read:
chuck e cheese can munch a hole in my -youknow-what
After you died, she thought as she carefully washed her legs under the fine needles of water, for she had recently learned that some people didn't, you would see a little pie chart that told you how much of your life had been spent in the shower arguing with people you had never met. Oh but like that was somehow less worthy than spending your time care...
Readers Top Reviews
Ninaminacat
I can remember as a child being incredulous that artists such as Lowrie and Van Gogh were not appreciated during their lifetime; how could people not "get" their vision of the world? When I started "No-one Is Talking About This" I understood their point of view for the first time. I appreciated the reasoning for the format but, after the initial novelty had worn off (after a few pages), I experienced frustration and boredom, interspersed with the occasional moment of comprehension, pleasure or laughter. I have to admit that I might not have continued had the novel not been shortlisted for the (2021) Women's Prize for Fiction and I wanted to complete all six contending books. The loss would have been mine; the second part of the novel, which is both beautiful and heartbreaking, moved me to tears. As for the first section, I probably always was going to struggle, since posting book reviews is as close as I get to social media.
EbbieJP Wright
I loved the first part of this book, which was autofiction-ish cleverly wrapped in a scroll-addicted insecurity. But then the second half failed me. I see what Lockwood was doing, but it felt forced and way too sentimental. I didn't like comparing her sister's disabled baby to the decline of the internet. But this book still spoke to me, if not fully. The writing was wonderful for a time, but petered out. I wish that the first half had carried on instead of taking a turn, if I'm honest. I wasn't sure about reading the story of the death of a sick baby during lockdown when I thought I was going to read about society's problems with being online too much. It was an addled read, maybe unnecessarily harrowing; at times, dry and laugh out loud funny. Do I recommend it? Yes, but it's more of an experiment than a solid entertainment, and I'm still not sure how successful that experiment was, and you do need to know you're going to dive into uncomfortable darkness in the second act.
Mrs. K. A. Wheatley
Priestdaddy is a book I recommend to absolutely everyone. It remains, years after reading, one of my all time favourite books and one of those books by which I measure a person, depending on their response to it. I had high hopes for this book and I confess that right at the start I wasn't entirely sure whether I was going to enjoy it, or indeed, if I fully understood it. I got there, and after putting it down a couple of times and then coming back to it, I found my way into it and read the entirety of the rest in one sitting. You have to be patient with this but it pays dividends. Lockwood is a stellar writer, who does amazing things with language and gives you a glimpse into a world that you wouldn't otherwise see. This is a superb exploration of what love means, how to manage grief and how we deal with the unthinkable when it happens to us and how that experience might change us. She is particularly gifted at exploring the boundaries between what we believe we will do and what we do, do, and indeed what happens when our beliefs are tested.
A ReaderMartin Jones
As mentioned elsewhere, this book is written in tweets, essentially -- that's what the 'portal' is, I believe. Small bursts, which is either a clever or tedious stylistic gimmick, probably somewhere in between. The first half, which goes on far too long, is about nothing except this, the pointless superficiality of life in the 'portal.' The second half, apparently based on an event in the author's sister's life, is almost unbearable in its sadness, though still written in short bursts. It seems to have nothing to do with the first half, unless you decide that the first half is about an empty void and the second half is about real life and real love (and loss .. this is announced early and is not a spoiler). There is no reason why these two halves should have been combined into one book. I first read an excerpt from the second half in the New Yorker Mag (I didn't realize it was an excerpt), thought it brilliant, pre-ordered the book. So happy to finally get it, and launched in. At first I was annoyed, then caught on, then found it clever, then tiresome, then tragedy porn, and read until I couldn't stand it anymore, and skimmed the final pages with one eye closed. Lockwood is a poet, and her use of language and imagery is skillful. But the second half felt like exploitation, and wrong, to me, even if the love felt true. (Interestingly, I'd read another book by Lockwood .. I think.) Just know that it might kill you with grief, which you won't see coming in the first half.
ScoutKristina (Washi
I don't turn to literature to escape the hyped shallowness of the internet, only to have it stylistically replicated, and repackaged as a book. Here's what I would say to Ms. Lockwood: Get a blog. This mess you published between two covers is not a book. I was prepared to read a book about someone who'd fallen into online addiction and whose feelings and reactions were filtered through that experience. What I was NOT prepared to do was spend the majority of 222 pages being sucked into a morass of pointless cultural minutia to attempt to make me viscerally experience what the narrator did. One needn't drown to apprehend drowning. Just show me that the narrator is trapped between the Scylla and Charybdis of the internet and reality. At some point, an author needs to trust readers to invest themselves in the story because who wants to open a book about a dark and stormy night that cuts the power and sprays water in your face? If all the endless rabbit hole internet stage dressing is removed from Ms. Lockwood's tale, there's nothing here but a woman's sister experiences a one in a million tragedy... a woman and her sister that the author never actually introduces to the reader. In better hands, maybe I would wonder why I cared so little about the tragedy, but if I, the gal who cries at the Folgers commercials where neighbors do kind things to neighbors at Christmas, am not moved, I'm inclined to think it's an author issue, not a me issue.
Short Excerpt Teaser
Part One
She opened the portal, and the mind met her more than halfway. Inside, it was tropical and snowing, and the first flake of the blizzard of everything landed on her tongue and melted.
Close-ups of nail art, a pebble from outer space, a tarantula's compound eyes, a storm like canned peaches on the surface of Jupiter, Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, a chihuahua perched on a man's erection, a garage door -spray-painted with the words STOP! DON'T EMAIL MY WIFE!
Why did the portal feel so private, when you only entered it when you needed to be everywhere?
She felt along the solid green marble of the day for the hairline crack that might let her out. This could not be forced. Outside, the air hung swagged and the clouds sat in piles of couch stuffing, and in the south of the sky there was a tender spot, where a rainbow wanted to happen.
Then three sips of coffee, and a window opened.
I'm convinced the world is getting too full lol, her brother texted her, the one who obliterated himself at the end of every day with a personal comet called Fireball.
Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money. Slowly, slowly, she found herself moving toward a position so philosophical even Jesus couldn't have held it: that she must hate capitalism while at the same time loving film montages set in department stores.
Politics! The trouble was that they had a dictator now, which, according to some people (white), they had never had before, and according to other people (everyone else), they had only ever been having, constantly, since the beginning of the world. Her stupidity panicked her, as well as the way her voice now sounded when she talked to people who hadn't stopped being stupid yet.
The problem was that the dictator was very funny, which had maybe always been true of all dictators. Absurdism, she thought. Suddenly all those Russian novels where a man turns into a teaspoonful of blackberry jam at a country house began to make sense.
What had the beautiful thought been, the bright profundity she had roused herself to write down? She opened her notebook with the sense of anticipation she always felt on such -occasions-perhaps this would finally be it, the one they would chisel on her gravestone. It read:
chuck e cheese can munch a hole in my -youknow-what
After you died, she thought as she carefully washed her legs under the fine needles of water, for she had recently learned that some people didn't, you would see a little pie chart that told you how much of your life had been spent in the shower arguing with people you had never met. Oh but like that was somehow less worthy than spending your time carefully monitoring the thickness of beaver houses for signs of the severity of the coming winter?
Was she stimming?? She feared very much that she was.
Things that were always there:
The sun.
Her body, and the barest riffling at the roots of her hair.
An almost music in the air, unarranged and primary and swirling, like yarns laid out in their colors waiting.
The theme song of a childhood show where mannequins came to life at night in a department store.
Anonymous History Channel footage of gray millions on the march, -shark-snouted airplanes, silk deployments of missiles, mushroom clouds.
An episode of True Life about a girl who liked to oil herself up, get into a pot with assorted vegetables, and pretend that cannibals were going to eat her. Sexually.
The almost-formed unthought, Is there a bug on me???
A great shame about all of it, all of it.
Where had the old tyranny gone, the tyranny of husband over wife? She suspected most of it had been channeled into weird ideas about supplements, whether or not vinyl sounded "warmer," and which coffeemakers were nothing but a shit in the mouth of the coffee christ. "A hundred years ago you would have been mining coal and had fourteen children all named Jane," she often marveled, as she watched a man stab a finger at his wife in front of the Keurig display. "Two hundred years ago, you might have been in a coffee shop in Göttingen, shaking the daily paper, hashing out the questions of the -day-and I would be shaking out sheets from the windows, not knowing how to read." But didn't tyranny always feel like the hand of the way things were?
It was a mistake to believe that other people were not living as deeply as you were. Besides, you were not even living that deeply.
The amount of eavesdropping that was going on was enormous, and the implications not yet known. Other people's diaries st...
She opened the portal, and the mind met her more than halfway. Inside, it was tropical and snowing, and the first flake of the blizzard of everything landed on her tongue and melted.
Close-ups of nail art, a pebble from outer space, a tarantula's compound eyes, a storm like canned peaches on the surface of Jupiter, Van Gogh's The Potato Eaters, a chihuahua perched on a man's erection, a garage door -spray-painted with the words STOP! DON'T EMAIL MY WIFE!
Why did the portal feel so private, when you only entered it when you needed to be everywhere?
She felt along the solid green marble of the day for the hairline crack that might let her out. This could not be forced. Outside, the air hung swagged and the clouds sat in piles of couch stuffing, and in the south of the sky there was a tender spot, where a rainbow wanted to happen.
Then three sips of coffee, and a window opened.
I'm convinced the world is getting too full lol, her brother texted her, the one who obliterated himself at the end of every day with a personal comet called Fireball.
Capitalism! It was important to hate it, even though it was how you got money. Slowly, slowly, she found herself moving toward a position so philosophical even Jesus couldn't have held it: that she must hate capitalism while at the same time loving film montages set in department stores.
Politics! The trouble was that they had a dictator now, which, according to some people (white), they had never had before, and according to other people (everyone else), they had only ever been having, constantly, since the beginning of the world. Her stupidity panicked her, as well as the way her voice now sounded when she talked to people who hadn't stopped being stupid yet.
The problem was that the dictator was very funny, which had maybe always been true of all dictators. Absurdism, she thought. Suddenly all those Russian novels where a man turns into a teaspoonful of blackberry jam at a country house began to make sense.
What had the beautiful thought been, the bright profundity she had roused herself to write down? She opened her notebook with the sense of anticipation she always felt on such -occasions-perhaps this would finally be it, the one they would chisel on her gravestone. It read:
chuck e cheese can munch a hole in my -youknow-what
After you died, she thought as she carefully washed her legs under the fine needles of water, for she had recently learned that some people didn't, you would see a little pie chart that told you how much of your life had been spent in the shower arguing with people you had never met. Oh but like that was somehow less worthy than spending your time carefully monitoring the thickness of beaver houses for signs of the severity of the coming winter?
Was she stimming?? She feared very much that she was.
Things that were always there:
The sun.
Her body, and the barest riffling at the roots of her hair.
An almost music in the air, unarranged and primary and swirling, like yarns laid out in their colors waiting.
The theme song of a childhood show where mannequins came to life at night in a department store.
Anonymous History Channel footage of gray millions on the march, -shark-snouted airplanes, silk deployments of missiles, mushroom clouds.
An episode of True Life about a girl who liked to oil herself up, get into a pot with assorted vegetables, and pretend that cannibals were going to eat her. Sexually.
The almost-formed unthought, Is there a bug on me???
A great shame about all of it, all of it.
Where had the old tyranny gone, the tyranny of husband over wife? She suspected most of it had been channeled into weird ideas about supplements, whether or not vinyl sounded "warmer," and which coffeemakers were nothing but a shit in the mouth of the coffee christ. "A hundred years ago you would have been mining coal and had fourteen children all named Jane," she often marveled, as she watched a man stab a finger at his wife in front of the Keurig display. "Two hundred years ago, you might have been in a coffee shop in Göttingen, shaking the daily paper, hashing out the questions of the -day-and I would be shaking out sheets from the windows, not knowing how to read." But didn't tyranny always feel like the hand of the way things were?
It was a mistake to believe that other people were not living as deeply as you were. Besides, you were not even living that deeply.
The amount of eavesdropping that was going on was enormous, and the implications not yet known. Other people's diaries st...
