No One Is Talking About This

I DNF'd this book because I couldn't get into it. This is more of a note for future me when I wonder why I didn't finish it. I'm sure the book is good, as multiple critics have said, but I couldn't get past the disjointed tweet-like format. I'm sure the tweets made more sense as you read on but I didn't get that far. I may try it again with fresh eyes.

Reading the first half as someone who was there, who saw it all, and reflects on the time spent with a mixture of wasteful disdain and gratitude for the person it's made me, is an interesting experience. Especially now that twitter in many ways is dead, the first half feels like a museum exhibit, preserving the energy of what once was. That alone doesn't make for a compelling read. I wept through the second half. Lockwood captures a rare thing here. How lucky we are to share love in this world.

What the fk

Not for me. Too exactly for me...? Idk.

Maybe because I am/have been so terminally online; most of it literally just felt like scrolling through Twitter (X / the portal / Facebook). Or maybe scrolling through my own posts and likes from 2016. Hard to understand who the intended audience is. Me? I know at least 90% of those references. I remember experiencing them in real time; they are mostly just bleak to me now. The non-terminally online? Would they even understand any of it?? Maybe it is just because I am actively trying to wean myself from the phrenetic, disjointed stream of information that it just was exactly not what I needed.

However, the style worked much better in the last third when it gets more personal and poetic. As gently as I can, this was also not for me – for a host of completely different reasons. Not the least of which is that it all hits different after June 2022 than it probably did in 2021. But I suspect that, for many, it is a pretty exquisite expression of a very particular experience of love and grief. Here, the quick vignettes may be the only way to hold the multitudes.

And perhaps that is only born out the the experience of living in the Portal.

Beautiful. Funny. Difficult. True.

3,5*
I kinda got what this book was trying to do, by the formatting and language at least. But I didn't really get it story wise.
I liked the vibes and the more postmodern form, but I really had to push myself to finish it and this book is really short!
Well, wanted to read it because of Women's Prize and I did! Have to decide if I'll keep it or sell it.

Hilarious in ways I didn't know books could be - tweet-like vignettes - that give way to a deeply moving, heartbreaking set of experiences that awed me

A book for the chronically online if I've ever seen one. It condenses Twitter and internet fame down info it's essential parts and pairs it with the bleak happenings of IRL to give you a perspective so sad that it's funny.

She remembered the peculiar onrushing pain of the portal, where everything was happening except for this. But for now, the previous unshakable conviction that someone else was writing the inside of her head was gone.

No One Is Talking About This

People throw around the term "digital native" as if it's the province of particular generations (another fake idea), but Lockwood's character here is the ur-digital native, a person whose whole existence is mediated by the Portal's idiom.

As a person who considered herself terminally online for a period of time, and made her living from the vicissitudes of "content creation" before it was tagged with that name, there was a lot to identify with here. The push and pull between the Portal and the Real in the latter half of the book seems to come as a surprise to the protagonist but the rest of us saw it coming and, in my case, were filled with dread.

Skala pretencioznosti eksplodirala.

In this singular novel based on personal experience, Lockwood expertly weaves together disparate elements to create a uniquely twenty-first-century tragicomic tapestry. This book is about an event that brings a terminally online public figure back to the joy and despair of reality; it is difficult to describe in any further detail. Presented in short, digestible bursts spoofing social media posts, it is the memetic made literary. It is hilarious, ironic, depressing, inspiring, poignant, affecting. Above all, No One Is Talking About This encourages the reader to see from a new perspective and to think deeply about what truly connects us.

3.5⭐️

Blazed through this one. Equal parts extremely online and desperate clutching at remaining in the present. If you read more Tweets than magazines, highly recommended.

i really really liked this...i feel like i read it at an important time in my life and man... every chronically online bitch needs to read this

This felt like two books - I really liked the first one, it was weird and meta and some seriously great commentary. The style didn't carry over well to the second half, and I found myself struggling to maintain interest in it. This had potential, but i don't think it fully achieved what it set out to do.

Jeg er virkelig usikker. Dette har vært en unormalt krevende konsentrasjonsøvelsue på tross av korte avsnitt og ganske så enkelt, lyrisk og elokvent språk. Jeg vet at det handler om livet i en portal, og om hvordan det er å leve i nærheten av noen som har barn med proteus-syndrom, et syndrom jeg aldri har betegnelsen på før, men som jeg har sett i den strålende filmen “Elefantmannen” med Anthony Hopkins. Det litterære dilemmaet skal være gåten skjerm/virkelig liv og jeg forstår det gjennom konsentrasjon. Samtidig blir det springende, språklige hopp og sprett som jeg ofte liker hos andre forfattere, men som i denne innpakningen gjør at jeg mister nerven, det som skaper det dype engasjementet for hovedpersonene - helt til del to, hvor småbarnet med proteussyndromet tar over plassen som hovedperson - og da forstår jeg hvorfor andre liker dette så godt. For min egen del ble det nok litt for spesielt, og flinkheten i den kreative utfoldelsen blir nettopp det: For flinkt.

This one was weird. At times interesting, funny, emotional, and poignant — but very weird. The back cover calls it “genre-defying,” which feels right. I'd say this sits somewhere between poetry, satire, and internet speak. It's a novel made up of nearly schizophrenic, barely linear fragments of internet culture: a little bit of everything all of the time. But then towards the middle it starts dovetailing into a family drama, which feels like a departure from the earlier part of the book. Some really quotable lines throughout.

What a remarkable and moving book. It is one of the funniest books I have read in a long time, without being cynical or snarky. You will both laugh and cry. It is an incisive snapshot of the contemporary mind and experience of the world, relationships, and human difficulties that transcend all technological epochs. Through the lens and filter of our unique media and technological eccentricities, Lockwood gives us a meditation and celebration of what it means to be human underneath and behind all of the posts, likes, and stories. It is neither an indictment of our social media-obsessed age, nor a fetishization of it. Simply a poignant exploration of its limits and the parts of the human soul and experience it cannot adequately capture, share, nor affect. I cannot recommend this book more highly, especially to all of my fellow millennials trying to find meaning and rest in our current age.

I couldn't get into the extremely online first portion, but then the second half came and

In the first part of this book there's an obvious comparison to be made to Jenny Offill's writing with its short, interlinked paragraphs, but the motives feel different. This is more like a printout of a Twitter feed than a considered collection of vignettes. The second part is a grief memoir and it took me by surprise because the shift in tone was so dramatic, but it becomes something quite beautiful once you've settled into it. As a whole, this is a story about how the internet has taken over our lives and the few brief intervals of respite we get from it when ‘real life' intervenes. It's painfully of the moment, and prompts us to consider what's more important in life - actual human contact, or the bizarre and fleeting internet notoriety that so many people seem to crave these days.

One to continue to think on leaving me unsure how to rate this!

Part 1 - I almost abandoned the book. I thought maybe I was too old to understand.
Part 2 - Helped me understand the point of Part 1. And broke my heart.

january 2024 reread review to comeoriginal june 2021 review:4.5 ⭐️ RTC once i'm done crying–This ended up being an incredibly impactful read for me, although I wouldn't have known that from the start. I went into this relatively cold, knowing only that it had ‘two parts' and had a lot to do with online culture. Both of those things are very true, but what I wasn't prepared for was how absolutely this would destroy me. The first part reads much like a Twitter feed and contains plenty of internet humor; I was nearly cackling at both how relatable it felt and how Lockwood was able to condense and present these collective internet experiences. If you are not capital-O Online, I worry that you'll be lost and/or hate this. If you hate books about the internet, definitely do not read this. I personally found it to be a unique take on tackling the intricacies of modern technology and was looking forward to seeing where Lockwood took it.Enter, Part 2. I had absolutely no idea where Part 2 was going to go and won't discuss it too thoroughly because I think going in without expectations will give it the biggest impact. Let me just say that I think Part 1 sets the stage perfectly for the tragedy that unfolds in Part 2. It provides the foundation to understand how the narrator copes and to see the lens she views the world through.I feel like this will be a divisive book so I hesitate to recommend it to anyone who isn't fully convinced by the concept. I struggled myself a little bit towards the beginning to read this in anything other than small bits. But close to Part 2, I was able to sit down and and carefully inhale the rest. I really, really enjoyed this though and very much look forward to reading more by Lockwood.content warnings: birth defects, infant deathBlog Twitter Instagram Facebook Ko-fi

Is this the best book I've ever read?

The narrator's world in the first part of this book is dominated by “The Portal,” a social media platform where people get their news and spend time interacting with others. The portal is a kind of parallel society with its own standards of behavior, of what is funny or interesting or appropriate. The narrator is a sort of expert or representative resident of the portal who is in demand around the world for her talks about the world of the portal. I labeled this book Dystopia because of the portal, where the things people say and do are harsh, crass, loud, nonsensical–and where harshness, crassness, loudness, and nonsensicality seem to be encouraged and applauded. There is also reference to a dictator and authoritarian policies recently enacted that may sound familiar to people who have lived through the 2017-2021 Trump administration.

Midway through the book, a change occurs. The narrator steps back from the portal and becomes more connected to people. The harshness of language and behavior recedes in the presence of some harsh reality. I have to admit I felt MUCH more sympathetic to the narrator in this part of the book.

No One is Talking About This is written in brief, disconnected paragraphs–a little long for most social media platforms, but short for a novel. Sometimes the paragraphs flow together and sometimes they don't. Sometimes the paragraphs are opaque and sometimes they are highly accessible. There are beautiful sentences and sensitive observations all the way through. The style makes it easy to read the book quickly, so whether you love it or not, it won't take long to read. I didn't love it, though I appreciated Patricia Lockwood's ability to make the portal into such a hellscape that I thought seriously about closing my social media accounts.