No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Reviewed by: Beth Weimer, Communications Specialist
Genre: Literary Fiction
Suggested Age: Adults
What is the book about?: What happens if posting “can a dog be twins?” makes you famous? A woman flings outrageous content into the Portal, doom scrolls her life into oblivion, and discovers that being an Extremely Online Person is not without hazards as the lines begin to blur between reality and you and us and them. When an unthinkable tragedy rips through her family, the woman is forced to deal with the disconnect the Internet has created within herself, Real Life, and the painful, fundamental beauty of human connection.
My Review: Oh man. This book was the gut/brain/heart punch I’ve needed. It’s embarrassing how well some of the fragments fit my brain. Lockwood almost perfectly captures the absolute absurdity and heartbreak of our current culture and the unfathomable ways social media and the Internet have intrinsically altered our minds, our relationships, and our communal consciousness. And then the tragedy, oof. The experience the author creates through the observational, stream of consciousness format is breathtaking, and realizing the account is auto-fictional made me sob even harder. This book is graphic, it’s performative, it’s vulnerable, so flawed and tragic and funny – much like the world we’re dealing with – I think it will speak to you even if you’re not Very Online.
Three Words That Describe This Book: Brilliant, Funny, Meta
Give This a Try if You Like… Twitter, Weather by Jenny Offill, Priestdaddy by Patricia Lockwood
Rating: 5/5
About FDL Reads
FDL Reads is a series of weekly book reviews from Fondulac District Library.
