Michelle Dsouza
No One Is Talking About This was my first fragmented novel, and for the opening stretch I was sure the failure was mine. I never read blurbs before starting a book, so I arrived with no warning: no conventional chapters, no orientation, only a stream of post-sized paragraphs from the mind of an unnamed woman who went viral once and now lives half her life inside a place called the portal. I felt locked out, and I kept asking why anyone would write a book this way.
The answer arrived once I stopped fighting the form. The fragments mimic the scroll. Reading them recreates the exact texture of an hour online, attention ricocheting between the absurd and the sincere, and Lockwood controls the ricochet with unnerving precision. The first half is funny in a way few literary novels manage. I laughed out loud repeatedly, and one four-word fragment, "Can a dog be twins?", has taken up permanent residence in my head. Lockwood is a poet before she is a novelist, and the poetry lives in the rhythm of her sentences and in the way a single line, sitting alone on the page, detonates.
At the midpoint the novel pivots. Real life breaks through the screen, a family tragedy takes over, and I will say nothing more specific, because arriving at the second half unprepared is part of what makes it devastating. The back half engaged me more deeply than the front. It becomes a reflection on grief, illness, and what the portal is worth when measured against a real and finite life. The narrator has spent years performing a self online, and the book quietly asks what the performance cost her. The critique of the internet is sharp without once tipping into cliché, and the structure is right as it stands. The first half must be as long as it is for the second half to land as hard as it does.
A format note. I read the physical while listening to the audio, narrated by Kristen Sieh, and the tandem smoothed the fragmentation considerably. If the form intimidates you, this is the way in.
This is autofiction, a little over 200 pages, and it left my head aching in a way I enjoyed. My one reservation is the entry. The book locks you out until you find the key, and some readers will put it down before they do. 4.5 stars, and my introduction to Patricia Lockwood will not be my last encounter with her.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.
No One Is Talking About This was my first fragmented novel, and for the opening stretch I was sure the failure was mine. I never read blurbs before starting a book, so I arrived with no warning: no conventional chapters, no orientation, only a stream of post-sized paragraphs from the mind of an unnamed woman who went viral once and now lives half her life inside a place called the portal. I felt locked out, and I kept asking why anyone would write a book this way.
The answer arrived once I stopped fighting the form. The fragments mimic the scroll. Reading them recreates the exact texture of an hour online, attention ricocheting between the absurd and the sincere, and Lockwood controls the ricochet with unnerving precision. The first half is funny in a way few literary novels manage. I laughed out loud repeatedly, and one four-word fragment, "Can a dog be twins?", has taken up permanent residence in my head. Lockwood is a poet before she is a novelist, and the poetry lives in the rhythm of her sentences and in the way a single line, sitting alone on the page, detonates.
At the midpoint the novel pivots. Real life breaks through the screen, a family tragedy takes over, and I will say nothing more specific, because arriving at the second half unprepared is part of what makes it devastating. The back half engaged me more deeply than the front. It becomes a reflection on grief, illness, and what the portal is worth when measured against a real and finite life. The narrator has spent years performing a self online, and the book quietly asks what the performance cost her. The critique of the internet is sharp without once tipping into cliché, and the structure is right as it stands. The first half must be as long as it is for the second half to land as hard as it does.
A format note. I read the physical while listening to the audio, narrated by Kristen Sieh, and the tandem smoothed the fragmentation considerably. If the form intimidates you, this is the way in.
This is autofiction, a little over 200 pages, and it left my head aching in a way I enjoyed. My one reservation is the entry. The book locks you out until you find the key, and some readers will put it down before they do. 4.5 stars, and my introduction to Patricia Lockwood will not be my last encounter with her.
Originally posted at www.instagram.com.