No One Is Talking about This
Patricia Lockwood
(Author)
Description
A NATIONAL BESTSELLER "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.
Product Details
Price
$25.00
$23.00
Publisher
Riverhead Books
Publish Date
February 16, 2021
Pages
224
Dimensions
5.0 X 8.1 X 1.1 inches | 0.7 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780593189580
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About the Author
Patricia Lockwood was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana and raised in all the worst cities of the Midwest. She is the author of two poetry collections, Balloon Pop Outlaw Black and Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals, a New York Times Notable Book, and the memoir Priestdaddy, which was named one of the ten best books of 2017 by The New York Times Book Review. Lockwood's writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor.
Reviews
Advance praise for No One Is Talking About This "Reading Patricia Lockwood feels like looking through a kaleidoscope built by a mischievous sorcerer--the world is suddenly rearranged in fragments that are cosmic, wondrous, humiliating, and profane. No One Is Talking About This is a furiously original novel, alive and unstable; the book builds to a reminder of how devastation and connection produce each other, endlessly and surprisingly, both on the internet and in human places that our shared digital consciousness can never reach." --Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror "I really admire and love this book. Patricia Lockwood is a completely singular talent and this is her best, funniest, weirdest, most affecting work yet." --Sally Rooney, author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends "Rare is the writer who can adequately capture the strange duality of life in the age of social media, a reality in which the visceral and virtual are constantly colliding. But then, Patricia Lockwood is a rare writer; one whose work--whether a poem, memoir, or tweet--distills the essence of the extremely profane and reverent all at once . . . [Lockwood has an] ability to reflect what is so terribly funny and so terribly tragic about this particular moment in time." --Refinery29 "Lockwood's debut novel comes packed with the humor, bawdiness, and lyrical insight that buoyed her memoir Priestdaddy . . . In the book's shimmering second half, the internet jokes continue between the sisters as a means of coping with uncertainty, and resonate with the theme of life's ephemerality vs. the internet's infinitude. Throughout, a fragmented style captures and sometimes elevates a series of text messages and memes amid the meditations on family . . . This mighty novel screams with laughter just as it wallops with grief." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "An insightful--frequently funny, often devastating--meditation on human existence online and off." --Kirkus (starred review) "Provocative, addictive . . . With unfettered, imagistic language, Lockwood conjures both a digital life that's easily fallen into, and the sorts of love and grief that can make it all fall away." --Booklist (starred review)
