A book of two halves that had be smiling wryly in the first and tearful in the second. At first we are introduced to the main character as she becomes a ‘celebrity’ after a comment goes viral. We are surrounded by the online world, the ‘portal’, all parts of it, the funny, the farcical, the terrifying and the ridiculous. I felt a spotlight was on all forms of social media but my mind primarily went to Twitter. There is such beauty and benefit to the online world but the ugly, dirty beating heart is never far from the surface. Lockwood’s poetic prose felt very fantastical and showed the surreal nature of it. What kind of reality can we really hold onto when we are forever submersed in an online reality?

The second part of the story holds such weight and really brought me back to the real world when she has to deal with a hugely traumatic event. The beauty, light, love and heartbreak just ripped me open. The events so beautifully captured in snippets of time.

The juxtaposition of the 2 halves, the online world which we choose to immerse ourselves in and the real world which can throw anything at us did work but the second half for me was the true triumph.

SPOILER: A trigger warning should be given regarding infant death and disability.

3.5 stars

"Stream of consciousness had already been conquered by a man who wanted his wife to fart all over him. But what about the stream of consciousness that was not entirely your own? One that you participate in but that also acts upon you?"

Often I try to wait until I know exactly what I want to say about a book before I review it but I think I could be waiting a long time to do so with this one. I knew Patricia Lockwood was a brilliant writer from her memoir, Priestdaddy, but this work of autofiction (or work at least partially inspired by her own life) is one of the best books I've read in years. It is written, as the snide yet thought provoking statement above suggests, in a stream of consciousness that is not that of Joyce or early 20th century modernists but one that must necessarily reflect the complications of being, basically, so extremely online, part of a shared "mind" or reference point that becomes enmeshed with the person's own mind and thoughts. What the main character encounters in "the portal" feels more real to the reader than her day to day life. It is also, as the above quote suggests, irreverent, absurd and hilarious.

However, as much as I cringe while saying this, as I feel I need to break away from cliches for such a good book, it really did make me laugh out loud several times, but the ending left me in tears. I don't want to give anything away, but the second part takes a complete emotional turn that I really didn't see coming but elevated it in my mind from being a funny, clever read, to a wor of such emotional complexity, honesty, tenderness and sincerity that I'm really not sure I've read anything like it before.

In No One Is Talking About This we follow a woman, known for her viral internet posts, as she travels the world, speaking to her fans, and musing on her Very Online existence. When her mother texts, with "Something has gone wrong", the woman leaves her Very Online life to be around her family - and the absurdity of the internet (or the "portal" as it's termed) becomes increasingly evident.

What I Liked:
- excellently witty and weird
- as someone who spends a lot of time online, I felt called out constantly, seen throughout.
- relatable
- full of heart and empathy
- easy to read
- the shift at the midpoint was wonderfully jarring - I'm still not entirely sure how it was one book

What I Didn't Like:
- sometimes it was a lil too weird and I had to read a couple of times to understand, but this may also have been a minor formatting issue due to it being an arc

I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who likes their fiction weird and comical and sad. It left me full to the brim on feelings and observations. I can't honestly say anything about this - you just gotta read it. I think it'll stay with me a long time.

Big thanks to the author, NetGalley, and Bloomsbury for the ARC - this one's available now!

Some nice prose and captures the inner voice of someone who spends their life online but didn’t feel there were any great insights and 12% in, nothing has happened yet.
I like fiction with ideas but I need a story to hang them on. DNF

I listened to the audiobook for this title.
This book missed the mark for me. I felt that although there were some astute observations that made me smile, I visualised the book as just a person's ramblings and observations and with no real plot to get stuck into.
The narrator was definitely easy to listen to, but I believe she was disadvantaged by the book's actual substance.
This one was just not for me, unfortunately.

riveting and brilliantly written - captivating prose - it took me a while to immerse myself but as I did, I picked up a fugitive narrative (here I am writing like her, well, a bit) - seeming non sequitors are not - and when the voice of her husband, early on, comes in, i realised i'd be waiting for an interlocutor - and so the author delivers . exceptional and depends on the rhythms for sure of our reading and use of the internet - I absolutely loved this - and the warmth and intimacy of the voice truly worked for me ... I am gushing - you will too ...

NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS is about a woman known for her viral social media posts and travels the world speaking to her fans. Her world is the internet, or as she calls it ‘the portal’. It’s scary how much of our lives are consumed by ‘the portal’ but that’s for another day..... Anyhoo, a family crisis strikes which causes real life and genuine emotions, and interactions with others, (what’s that again?!! 🤯) to take centre stage, NOT the all consuming portal.

Its not a straightforward book, actually it starts off quite confusing, yet quite funny as I do love a meme. 😂 And it takes time to get used to the format. I did whizz through it though as it’s just over 200 pages. It was an original, sort of weird and probing book. I mean, is anyone’s life not overwhelmed by the internet? As much as we would like to believe it’s not; it is, especially in a year where we have relied on it for connection. We all just want proper human connection really don’t we?! NO ONE IS TALKING ABOUT THIS was interesting and challenging. I liked it. 😃 I would be keen to read more by this author.

For me, in the synopsis, the word "opens" in "As this urgent, genre-defying book opens" is the keyword. Going into this book, I was mainly interested in the part where the 'offline reality check' text comes from the protagonist's mum. I expected probably about a quarter of a third of online world-building/heavy Internet presence at the start, but to be honest if I'd known I'd have to wait until past halfway before the texts from her mother arrive, I don't think I'd have started this book.

While I did laugh at a number of the Internet humour jokes and references, probably an equal amount went right over my head. I spend relatively little time on Twitter (I'm more of an #bookstagram girl) so perhaps I'm not the 'ideal' reader for this book? It was funny and so hilariously random, but after extended doses of non-stop meme and surreal Internet-ness (pretty much the entire first half) I got the same sort of fatigue as when I've scrolled for too long on social media, and had to stop. There seems to be a rather apt metaphor for the Internet age in this experience...?

Lockwood has a really vivid and distinctive writing style, with a lot of really rather poetic lines. I loved a lot of the metaphors she used. One of my favourites seemed to liken the power of the Ark of the Covenant to the information deluge of the internet.

In the future I might pick this up again. There's not really much plot to keep track of so I think it'll be fine to jump right back in, but for now I just have way too many other books I'm dying to get to!

Round up to three stars for the writing which is gorgeous, but the execution just didn't work for me (and I am in no way opposed to books about the internet). Just a case of 'it's not the book, it's me.'

This is really not a novel - it is a collection of interesting observations about the Internet, but it is obvious this is not the author's preferred format. She is a poet, not a novelist, and attempting to get through this was not an enjoyable experience.

This is a book of two halves. The first is in fact a stream of consciousness revolving around the use of the Internet, social media and the hold it has on you. The second half is an in-depth explanation of what happens when your life is actually real, not the false existence fashioned by Twitter and Facebook ‘likes.’ The character is launched into reality which is such a contrast to her apparently previous shallow life ran by online living.

Very different from what I normally read, and I felt like I was missing some of the subtexts in the book, Patricia Lockwood is a hugely gifted and talented writer and poet, and this explores love, grief and life in a way that I hadnt come across previously. Not for everyone, but those who take to it will devour every word

Patricia Lockwood's No One is Talking About This was one of those books I expected to be clever, witty and quotable. It is all of those things and also heartbreaking. I certainly didn't expect to be sobbing in the second half. This is the most surprising book I've read in a long time with. Recommended.

Very much two books, the first a terribly clever stream of consciousness which highlights the strangeness and the danger in the online world and people's obsession with it. The second is a moving story of a family processing a tragedy which in turn helps them to see that love and connection are what is really important. The first definitely has some insight and some funny moments like when she worries that she may have done a 'Brexit' or that people in the US stopped having sex on November 8 2016 (not sure that's true maybe one has did). Over 100 pages of stream of consciousness was also quite painful to read, it did make me think about the ridiculousness of spending time online but after a while I was desperate for structure, plot, characters, narrative, anything.

The second half is a moving piece of writing of the narrator's sister's experience of having a child with a birth defect, especially poignant when exploring whether the birth would be dangerous for the mother and living in a state with strict abortion and inducing birth laws, which prioritise the baby over the mother. The characters are well defined, the narrative is there and the writing flows and is absorbing. I was moved by the emotions and intrigued by the science. I could have read more of this story and I worry that putting it together with the first part could take away from the importance of telling the story that no one is talking about.

With thanks to the publisher and netgalley for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

No One is Talking About This is genre-spanning debut from a formidably talented writer and poet who has stayed somewhat below the radar until now or has only been known for her social media mayhem. Incisive, original and frequently sardonic, this is a meditation on human existence both online and off as well as the juxtaposition of the fleeting impermanence of life and the seemingly limitless, unbounded nature of the internet. The first part of the book introduces an unnamed narrator and protagonist who has found notoriety by creating famous tweets and composing blog posts and has recently been elevated to prominence for such social media posts making a career out of it where she now travels around the world speaking on panels and meeting her adoring fans. The viral post that brought about this desirable lifestyle read — "Can a dog be twins”. 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?"

In the second part, our protagonist is in Vienna, Austria for a conference when her mother pleads with her to come home to Ohio. Discovering that her heavily pregnant younger sister is having significant complications making the likelihood of her needing a late-term abortion high, due to the baby she's carrying suffering from a profound congenital disorder, she makes the long trip back to The United States. This is a captivating, compelling and unique read with some meaningful messages and social commentary with regard to our world today, our increasing use of the internet and the distinct differences that mark life online to off. It very eloquently highlights through Lockwood's utilisation of two separate parts of the book that there are profound differences between reality-based life and that as an internet user. However, the once vastness distinguishing them is now diminishing to where it often is troublesome to know the difference. It's a timely and topical tale with the first section written in short, sharp prose that give the feel of Instagram captions or text messages and the second in equally snappy bursts that feel like stolen moments taken between breaths. This is a book you experience rather than read and I must concede that it is quite unlike anything I have ever encountered before. An always insightful, sometimes irreverent and enticingly moving novel. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll sigh and you'll find many moments where you'll be nodding your head in recognition. I have a funny feeling this is one I'll remember for a long time to come. Highly recommended.

There are so many great lines in this novel - "It was so easy, these days, to accidentally commit a Brexit" - and Patricia Lockwood is brilliant on the ridiculousness of online culture. There are plenty of in-jokes for those of us who spend too much time "in the portal", which makes the second section of the book, when real life takes precedence over the narrator's social media life, all the more raw. Will the novel still make sense in a few years when everyone has forgotten about the memes of the late 2010s? I don't know. Does that matter? Probably not. But a novel to read right now? Totally.

This debut novel from the famous poet is about being very inside the internet (aka the Twittersphere), as Lockwood called it the "portal", and being very outside of it, where there are certain things that do not have the sufficient lifespan or occupancy to survive.

It's a bisegmented novel, and are made of many tinier fragments, echoing social media feeds that encourage easy, fast, and unlimited scrolling and reading, like 280-character tweets. It took me few pages to get used to the bizarre format before it quickly grew on me. I pay more attention to some and less to the others. At times I nodded in agreement like the way I smashed the 'like' and 'retweet' buttons. At times some references and metaphors escaped me, reminiscent of new slangs and cliques and inside jokes birthed in the portal every day, impervious to me, shuns me out with some invisible bars made of 0 and 1.

The first part of the book took a deep dive and captured cancel culturer, social justice warriors, pronoun advocates, and more. It feels like a book that should be archived for the next generation in 50 years, when they will read and chuckle in amusement about our current internet culture - obsessed with trivial numerals and false connections with names that we type into search bars; or when they will read and blame us, because their lives have been Black Mirrorised, and we were the architect for our downfall and their demise.

The second part of the book brought us out of the portal into spaces of the earth where intimacy roams. I don't want to spoil it, but it touches upon how one deals with death and grief - things that don't find a lot of companionship in the portal. If the first section caught me nodding in agreement, the second got me tearing because I felt seen - the way we poured ourselves into the internet looking for some threads of comfort and warmth but returned home with indifference and loneliness. It's a book that I hope one day I'd be able to read again, agreeing to its nuisance and disagreeing to its accuracy. But for now, its pages of wrenching sadness and rawness left my heart open without closure.

This is a book for the Very Online.⁣
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I loved Priestdaddy and generally find Patricia Lockwood to be hilarious and wise about our current moment, but "No One is Talking About This" didn't quite to it for me.⁣
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The first half, chock full of references to Weird Twitter, follows an unnamed narrator travelling the world as a public intellectual. She delivers talks on the internet (The Portal, in Lockwood's mind) after going viral for a tweet reading "can a dog be twins." The second half pulls her out of the portal and into the equally confusing space of the real world when her sister suffers devastating pregnancy complications. ⁣
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It is a colorful and touching time capsule of the misalignment of our parallel lives online and offline, but I wonder if the exact moment it captures isn't too specific - it doesn't seem profound enough to have staying power. ⁣
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Overall, it's an unsettling reminder of how much and how little our virtual lives and hot takes matter. Thank you to @NetGalley and @bloomsburypublishing for an arc of this book, which is out in the UK on 16 February. ⁣

This really is a book of two halves and the nature of the narrative is such that it is hard to talk about the much stronger second half due to spoilers. The first 100 pages are a massive in-joke for regular Twitter users - the reading equivalent of losing an afternoon to mindless scrolling - but it is hard to imagine how effective this trope will be for non social media users.
The second half of the book contains some very beautiful if occasionally overly flowery writing and is a visceral and emotional account of the effect of a traumatic event on a family. If I'm honest, I wish some of that insight had gone into the earlier pages. Lockwood is an interesting and poetic writer though and this has much to recommend it.

What an unusual read. I found myself detached and disengaged from the first half, feeling no attachment to any of the characters. However, as soon as the story of her sister's pregnancy took hold, I was much more engaged. It was deeply evocative and moving.