no one is talking about this book review

But in No One Is Talking About This, Lockwood applies her wonderful turn of phrase to tragedy and how it intrudes on our lives, expanding to fill our horizons but this devastation-smallest of small consolations, perhaps-creates the conditions for compassion and the kind of grace that can transcend difference.' In her previous writing-her criticism and her wonderful memoir, Priestdaddy-Lockwood has established herself as one of the smartest, funniest writers writing today, and this, her first novel, only reinforces it. Strung together from flashes and impressions, the narrative follows the protagonist, who has achieved fame through the virality of her social media posts, as she travels the world for speaking engagements, addressing crowds of followers, even as she doubts whether she really is an expert-can she be an expert if her entire relationship with the phenomenon in question is purely reactive? Or is she uniquely possessed of a natural instinct for this kind of exploration?Īll the while, the material world pushes on the edges of this intangible realm-a “dictator” scrambles to power in an extremely thinly veiled analog to our very own vile and smarmy tyrant, and his depredations filter down from the global to the painfully personal. Referred to only as “the Portal,” the internet and its inhabitants swirl around her, her attention snagging now and then on the odd piece of content, which must be processed and engaged with quickly, almost instinctively, before it stops mattering.

The novel’s second-person narration follows the protagonist as she experiences social media and the internet as though by osmosis. Lockwood’s No One Is Talking About This is one of the ones that successfully circumvents this problem. The last few years have seen a number of books “about the internet,” both fiction and nonfiction, and all have run the risk of becoming irrelevant as soon as smartphone technology changes even slightly, or a new social media platform comes into being.

No one is talking about this book review