'Patricia Lockwood is the voice of a generation' Namita Gokhale 'A masterpiece' Guardian 'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney 'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail 'I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book' David Sedaris 'A rare wonder . . . I was left in bits' Douglas Stuart * WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2022 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 * * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 * * A BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS BOOK CLUB PICK * ______________________________________________ This is a story about a life lived in two halves. It's about what happens when real life collides with the increasing absurdity of a world accessed through a screen. It's about living in world that contains both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary. It's a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time. ______________________________________________ 'An utterly distinctive mixture of depth, dazzling linguistic richness, anarchic wit and raw emotional candour' Rowan Williams A 2021 Book of the Year: Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Evening Standard, The Times, New Statesman, Red, Observer, Independent, Daily Telegraph

Overall, almost everyone liked Lockwood's story of a social influencer who has a radical familial experience that shakes her world. It's a novel by a poet, and so it has a particular fragmented style that is definitely unorthodox and highly disconnected, but the writing shines in places and Lockwood certainly knows how to make the most out of those short passages. We generally felt that in the first half of the book, she stylistically captured a hyper fractured and very thin perspective of the world through social media, in this book called 'the portal.' The book makes a dramatic shift plot wise in the section part where the narrator's sister gives birth to a severely disabled child, and while the style of the book remains the same, the protagonist suffers a crisis of identity that drives the rest of the novel. All of us really liked that twist and felt that the novel worked because it had both of those sections to contrast each other. Where we differed was in the value of the first part. Many of us hated the novel until the second half put the rest of it into context. Some people found the fragmentation off-putting; others found the content vapid and self-indulgent. However, when the baby appears in the second half, that transition validated the pointlessness of the fist half beautifully. Others felt that the first half was strong the entire way through, providing a very true and very insightful look at the world of Twitter and Instagram, and that the baby's condition in the second half (being unable to have anything but raw sensations) perfectly mirrored the lack of focus and attention deficient of the social media word. A lot of our discussion hovered around how sympathetic the narrator was in the first half when she makes her living make six word jokes on social media and flying around the world to talk about culture and we never really agreed about whether she was a very smart, shallow person or just a representation of modern hyper-connected influence with smart insights and a functional family. Regardless, the second half brings it home. We recommend No One is Talking about This pretty strongly. Trust us that if it seems pointless in the beginning, it will all add up in the end.