Patricia Lockwood - No One Is Talking About This

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.

Comment: I impulsively brought this book from the library knowing nothing about it. The blurb seemed intriguing and I was curious to see how the world of the internet, with all the memes and social media, would be used as part of the plot.

This is a story told by a narrator whose names we aren't told but we know she is probably a digital influencer, someone whose life is very much centered on the online world. At first it is all about the vast amount of subjects which might get the narrator's attention and that might be something she would post about. Then, a unique situation in her family changes everything and the plot becomes more focused. Will the narrator find a way to cope and to adjust a life which was all about the appearances to one where her presence near her family can make a difference?

This is definitely an odd story and is shared in a way not often seen in fiction. I confess I thought this would be a bit more traditional, and I imagined the short sentences I glimpsed when I had a look at the pages of the book could be meaningful in the same way stories told through letters, notes, and other written means are, as I've read before. However, no, the sentences here are short but seem to indicate vague and random information about a huge number of subjects. Sometimes these notes don't even seem to have a connection between them.

I have to conclude this is intentional, to make the reader think about the vast world of social media, and the incredible number of people posting about everything and nothing at all and how pointless some things must be. Nevertheless, was it necessary to have this or slightly more than half of the book? I must say I was bored and confused and if the entries weren't short I might have DNF'd but it is true that those same short sentences were easy to read.

The narrator seems a little lost as well, during this part of the book. There are several notes or comments which seem to go nowhere, and I wonder why they were included.

Then the second part of the story has more purposeful posts and we become aware something is wrong with the pregnancy of the narrator's sister. The posts become more serious, easier to understand and to connect with and I imagined, again, the idea is to stress out how much more important some things are in life and those are truly worthy of being posted and talked about, so more people can learn or be aware of issues which should merit more interest.

The short sentences continue but it becomes obvious the narrator isn't posting such a charmed life online anymore and she is worried about her sister. I could sympathize with the narrator and with what going on with her family and in this regard, the internet can be a good tool, it can help people to know more about certain subjects that otherwise might not be as noticeable and, further, any subject becomes easier to matter if people can share personal stories and how that certainly reaches the public better.

Honestly, I don't have much to say. The book isn't big, it's easy to read yes, but it feels a little trivial, especially the first part. I get it that the author wanted to present this in such a way readers would think about the inconsequential element in some social media and how time consuming it can be, to the point nothing is important anymore, and then in the second half, the opposite, all might matter... but I was still not convinced and I can't say I'd want to read something else by the author.

Grade: 5/10