A review by thomasgoddard
No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
5.0
In 170 pages Lockwood has perfectly captured the essence of the internet. It is a space in which you are bewitched by the intrigue of attention-baiting false promises. Only to find that, through the briar patch of prolonged concentration, you discover you've been tricked into learning something or nothing at all. You often can't remember.
Now, that's going to sound as if the book was hollow. But it's really and truly not. It has to be one of the best novels I've read in a good long while. The scatterbrained fragmented narrative is a joy to read. (At least, for those whose minds have been bent into origami shapes of abstract comprehension.)
What the book manages is to twist your mind around presumption. The character isn't ever sure of their true political leaning (for all their protestations). So you might be led down a left wing pathway, only for a right wing uppercut out of nowhere. Or the opposite, a right wing character makes a statement that feels unsettlingly... reasonable.
Where the internet clickbaits you onto the hook and then hasn't the faintest clue what to do with you... Lockwood promptly clubs you on the head, guts you and mounts you on a wall; because to eat us would suggest she had any requirement of an audience.
And I really think that's a key here. This doesn't feel like a novel that was written with an audience in mind. Which is the trick to a damn good novel. Write what you want to say, not what you think people want to hear. The exact inverse of the internet.
Patricia Lockwood is one of my new favourite authors.
"Your attention is holy... it is the soul spending itself..."
Without doubt it is a novel addressing a future audience, in a time when people will look back on so many aspects of our culture and just accuse us of savagery. The wisest and kindest (meekest) of us today will pave a road toward that future... in the usual way... with our bones.
Now, that's going to sound as if the book was hollow. But it's really and truly not. It has to be one of the best novels I've read in a good long while. The scatterbrained fragmented narrative is a joy to read. (At least, for those whose minds have been bent into origami shapes of abstract comprehension.)
What the book manages is to twist your mind around presumption. The character isn't ever sure of their true political leaning (for all their protestations). So you might be led down a left wing pathway, only for a right wing uppercut out of nowhere. Or the opposite, a right wing character makes a statement that feels unsettlingly... reasonable.
Where the internet clickbaits you onto the hook and then hasn't the faintest clue what to do with you... Lockwood promptly clubs you on the head, guts you and mounts you on a wall; because to eat us would suggest she had any requirement of an audience.
And I really think that's a key here. This doesn't feel like a novel that was written with an audience in mind. Which is the trick to a damn good novel. Write what you want to say, not what you think people want to hear. The exact inverse of the internet.
Patricia Lockwood is one of my new favourite authors.
"Your attention is holy... it is the soul spending itself..."
Without doubt it is a novel addressing a future audience, in a time when people will look back on so many aspects of our culture and just accuse us of savagery. The wisest and kindest (meekest) of us today will pave a road toward that future... in the usual way... with our bones.