This book will hit differently to anyone who was a preteen and teen during the 2010s, and it will hit hard. Prasifka has managed to convey what it was to be on the internet during that time, and the repercussions it had on our mental health and perception and learning of the world around us. Couldn't stop reading and couldn't but feel for our main character.

This Is How I Remember computers and the internet coming into my childhood. The family computer. The dial-up internet. The A/S/L chats online. The hidden MSN chats. The eventual social media accounts. The top friends. The constantly updated profile photos. The music you chose to play on your profile. The HTML you learnt to make your profile look eDgY. The introduction of broadband + Wi-Fi. The getting your own personal laptop/phone/tablet. The pokes. The constant need to post and update your “friends”. Making things Facebook official. The photo albums of every single social event are catalogued. The untagging of photos you didn’t like. The liking and unliking of posts phase. The whole photo or it didn’t happen phase. Looking back at it all now leaves me feeling exhausted.

If you didn’t live through it, you’d struggle to believe it happened. And yet Catherine has captured what it was like to be there right down to the feelings that were felt at the time. I’m sure I’m not alone in this, just ask anyone born before 1998.

This is Prasifka’s second book and much like her first, I enjoyed it. Both have left me tired of life online and questioning my use of social media/my digital footprint. 2024 is the year I channel my inner Lorcan and fade away on social media ✌🏻

Thank you to Canongate Books + NetGalley for the opportunity to review #ThisisHowYouRememberIt before it publishes. I can’t wait to see what Catherine Prasifka does next. This Is How You Remember It publishes on May 2nd 2024 ✨ #NetGalley

This book definetly rang true for me as a woman who came of age as the internet was expanding. Along with all the inappropriate spaces explored and the subsequent impact on self worth. Very well captured coming of age that accurately depicts how mortifying it is to be a young girl navigating social minefields left and right.

Where it fell a bit short for me was that the takeaway seemed to be a bit shallow in contrast to the vivid exploration of online space, boiling down to more or less 'put down the phone and live in the moment'. I was happy to see the protagonist evolve and become more self assured as you'd expect with a coming of age tale, but it seemed to lack a certain weight and clarity for me.

I'm also not a massive fan of second person writing, and found the pacing made it hard at times to tell where we were with the story jumping forward every so often. And the magical realism element felt a bit 'hollow' for me as well, I'm not sure it added much to the story?

Overall a very intriguing story that brilliantly captures a very specific experience, definetly recommend to anyone in late 20s/early 30s to who this sounds familiar

DNF - This was purely a case of being the wrong reader for this style of storytelling. I think I would enjoy this more in a visual context or even if it was read to me via an audiobook. I appreciate the concept & I do intent to continue following Prasifka's writing career but, this book wasn't a good fit for me.

Absolutely brilliant, loved it. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for allowing me an advance copy, I will definitely be recommending.

Thank you to NetGalley and to the publisher for this ARC!

I really enjoyed this book; by the time I hit the 50% mark, I was unable to put it down. The writing style is so unique, and it being in second person makes the already incredibly relatable story even more so. I think that a lot of young women have had very similar experiences to this protagist in a myriad of ways. Although I think the protagonist is a little bit older than I am, I related so much to the coming of age while navigating friendships, relationships, and the burden that curating your online image can take on your mental and emotional health. I think the hole was an amazing symbol for the effects of these pressures that otherwise go unseen.

(Maybe the most relatable thing was loving that her chosen partner is not active on social media lmao)

Parts of this book feel like the movie "Eighth Grade," because it's so raw and real in those awkward middle school years that it's almost painful. I loved following this girl on her journey as she made mistakes and learned the hard lessons for herself. I was rooting for her and for Lorcan the whole way though, and although it was an incredibly slow burn with a kind of cliche ending, I was very satisfied by the end of it.

OMG where do I start??? As someone in the early 30s this was extremely real. I basically lived again through the late childhood and teenagehood and felt a lot of pain again. For that I think the book should come with a trigger warning 🙈
It made me angry at the ways we were made to live those years and how we were failed when not taught about things like abuse and consent. There was some joy too but not enough for my taste.
To sum up, i loved this book and it made me feel things which doesn’t happen that often. Thank you! Looking forward to see this book explode in popularity.

This is How You Remember It is an insightful novel; one of many in recent years that grapples with the impact of the internet on the first generation of adults who used the internet as children. As part of that generation, reading This Is How You Remember It gave me the uncanny feeling that the author had sliced off the top of my head and was peering into my brain; while my time spent online was less traumatic than the author's unnamed protagonist, so much of it still resonated with me: the good and the bad.

Let me explain. When the narrator of Prasifka's novel is 9, her family gets a computer. She becomes quickly addicted to this inclredible world of information; from new friends to virtual pets, the internet becomes her playground, and begins to shape her personality and worldview. As the novel progresses, we travel through time with the author - told in the second person, I interpreted it as the adult narrator looking back on her formative years. But I also travelled through my own past lived online, the novel lighting up long dormant neural pathways in my brain. Emails to new online friends! Bebo! The suffocating freedom of life online!

The book's depiction of the author's pre-teen and teen years are the most excruiating to read - the narrator finds herself accessing disturbing adult material and speaking to strange men on the internet before she's emotionally ready. This spills over into her real life, changing the way she views relationships with others, especially romantic ones, as well as having a catastrophic impact on her self-esteem.

As the novel progresses, the narrator becomes more focused on the idea of herself she presents on social media, and focuses on becoming that girl in the real world - despite feeling anything but cool and confident. It's heartbreaking to read and has stomach-churning consequences for the narrator. In illustrating these consequences, Prasifka uses a daring and wholly compelling literary device to illustrate the latter - I won't spoil it here, but it works so well, bringing a touch of magical realism to a book grounded firmly in reality.

While This Is How You Remember It feels really bleak at times, there's a love story running concurrently to the excavation of early-internet based trauma. It never feels heavy; despite the dark subject matter, it's an addictive and pacy read - at one point I described myself as "angry whenever I wasn't reading it".

Now, I am absolutely the target market for internet-based millenial-girl novels but as @lauraeatsbooks pointed out, "I think this book will resonate with a lot of people, particularly in the wide millennial (or millennial - older gen z) age bracket, and particularly how the promise of the internet as something that could bring everyone together really became the great isolator, forcing us all into our own individual phone-shaped prisons and not really offering any escape or alternative except for the ones we make ourselves."


Calling this a cautionary tale feels reductive, but Prasifka does offer the reader a map out of the wilds of the internet, into a different sort of life. It's rarely as easy as "switching off", and thankfully the novel side-steps a too-neat ending.

Compelling, dark and deeply resonant, Catherine Prasifka’s sophomore novel is a triumph.

This is How You Remember It by Catherine Prasifka is an insightful and contemporary novel that aligns the coming of age of its young lead character with the growth of the internet . From the early days when as a 9 year-old she uses websites to create virtual pets and make friends to less innocent pursuits and the constant struggle to fit in , being shamed and bullied online,including having an intimate video weaponized and spreading throughout the 'net.
I'm not sure what I found more shocking,the young girl's story or on discussing the book with young people I know being told, "that's the way it is" ,either way it's a powerful and relevant piece of work.
A well-written ,thought-provoking coming of age story that encompasses the influence of the internet,consent,choices and control. Given the subject matter this could have been exploitative,a catalogue of misery or both, Catherine Prosifka deftly addresses a number of difficult issues in an accessible and coherent way .

This Is How You Remember It captures the early wonder and magic of the internet as experienced through a young child, finding pictures of nice pets and later developing innocent penpal-like relationships with other young people online. This gives way quite quickly to accessing disturbing adult material when she is far too young to understand it. Her seemingly quite free or unmonitored access to mature and pornographic material shapes her understanding of how her body should develop and how her adult relationships should look. This understandably has catastrophic effects on her interpersonal relationships as a teenager through to early adulthood, and the shame and humiliation that she faces at the hands of bullying peers is expedited by their access to devices that can record and broadcast her intimate moments.

When I read This Is How You Remember It, I was really struck by the consistent use of the second person, and I eventually interpreted this choice as the protagonist trying to talk to her younger self, but across a huge divide which is before and after her discovery of the internet and computers, and before and after her finally developing a healthy boundary between the self, technology and social media. While I (thankfully) couldn’t relate to some of the more disturbing parts of this book as I was older than the protagonist by the time smartphones made access to the internet immediate and constant, I did find myself really identifying with some elements, or even realising even more clearly how this would have affected people not much younger than me. However, in many places, the “You” makes for an accusatory feeling, like the character is saying “not just me, but you too”, and it makes for an uncomfortable but also very addictive reading experience.

Prasifka uses a strange, yet I think effective, device that is sort of like magical realism in both of her novels that gives a unique dimension to relatable narratives. In This Is How You Remember It, a hole begins to grow in the pit of the protagonist’s stomach after a traumatic incident in her early teens and it grows until she can see right through herself. She becomes obsessed with hiding that even from the people closest to her, presenting a much more composed mask to the outside world to hide and almost eradicate the essence of who she really is.
This is reminiscent of the crack in the sky in her first novel, None of This Is Serious, which is a worldwide disaster the protagonist experiences in the main through the reaction on the internet, which also serves as an allegory of the coronavirus pandemic. I was so impressed of the sustained use of these devises that managed to highlight what was really going on beneath the surface of these novels, while never feeling gimmicky.

I think this book will resonate with a lot of people, particularly in the wide millennial (or millennial - older gen z) age bracket, and particularly how the promise of the internet as something that could bring everyone together really became the great isolator, forcing us all into our own individual phone-shaped prisons and not really offering any escape or alternative except for the ones we make ourselves.

Catherine Prasifka has managed yet again to explore the lives of young people in Ireland as lived in large part through the digital world, a brilliant chronicler of life online yet a one who imbues real heart and emotion in her writing. This will be one of the books everyone is talking about in 2024.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publishers for giving me an ARC to review

4.75 but rounding that up to a 5!!

I just finished this and spent the last 5 minutes crying. I related SO much to this, and it hit me hard with how this was written and the metaphor within it with the hole. I am honestly just at a loss of words on how to review this other that it hit me and wow. I am SO damn happy to have read this. It really felt like things I had thought of myself, about life, etc, were picked and just given to me to read. Thr 75 is purely for my lack of patience and wanting people to just talk things out, haha

Wow.

This felt like an emotional read, especially when I analyse it comparatively. From an era where I was allowed 1 hour a day to now where we are addicted and glued to our phones, its scary to see what it has become but also how there are options to overcome being chronically online.

Thank you NetGalley for providing me this arc!

"You do remember this, don't you? Why don't you?"

Stepping into this novel, I was utterly blown away by this writing and this plot. Prasifka takes stances on our most uncomfortable topics--insecurities, sex, and what growing up as a woman feels like.
This story provides the raw, unfiltered pain of growing up as a woman in a male gazed society.
How do we fit in?
How can we be pretty?
What do I need to change about myself in order to be like everyone else?
Prasifka shares the tale of a woman's life from adolescence to early adulthood that depicts the raw nature of growing up with the internet by your side. We see a young girl discover the dangers of the world through an online forum. The perception of what is 'hot' and how to portray ourselves to gain the male attention. The rawness of watching porn for the first time and feeling unequal to the screen. Our narrator faces the distorted reality of the internet and twists her own self to reflect what she sees in the media.
Seeing a character feel the pain of what it means to be 'pretty' and 'loved' is such a jolting experience--we have all been here. I saw myself in this character; I felt her pain in her negative perception of self.
Throughout this novel, we see this character age and her insecurities grow alongside her. We see her first experience with feeling shame and guilt from looking in the mirror. We see her craft herself into this 'perfect' version of herself to feel like she belongs. This tale is cautionary, it is raw, but most importantly, it is real. Prasifka shows what it is like to be a woman--our darkest moments of our lives written onto paper.

Publication Date: May 1, 2024

This Is How You Remember It is prasifka’s second novel. It is told in second person and follows a woman from a young girl as she grows up. It follows her as she gets a computer and discovers porn. Then we see her at school and how friendships and social media are intertwined. Her first kiss is on camera and it follows a hollow cycle of posting online. This is very good and I’m giving it 4 stars. It was very relatable for me personally and I’m sure many young women will feel the same way reading this. The story was easy to connect with considering the second person pov. Prasifka clearly had a talent and isn’t afraid to shine light on uncomfortable subjects. I’d definitely recommend this and it’s a story you read in one sitting.

I truly feel blown away by this book.
Some background - I read and wasn't the biggest fan of Prasifka's last offering, None of This is Serious. I didn't dislike it, I just thought it was okay. Often having read a book from an author it can bias my opinion going into their next book, if I read one.
Also, interestingly, at the time I finished this book, the book was still on 0 reviews on goodreads. no average rating to subconsciously influence my review. And it's particularly poignant when you take into account the actual subject matter of the book, how the internet has crept into our lives and shaped it forever.
I went into this book with my eyes wide open, and was immediately engulfed in something like nostalgia. A lot of what the main character experiences in the first section of the book mirrored my own - getting the first family computer, getting broadband, locking myself away in my parents bedroom where the computer was kept, IM'ing people on MSN, making a forbidden social media account, etc. etc. We were too young, however it was impossible to avoid it's lure, especially when so shiny and new.
Fast forward to the end of the teenage years, where everything ends in a full facebook album of photos from digital cameras. Every aspect of this book, in a way mirrored something from my own life. The main character wasn't always the nicest person, she was naive, but she was likeable because she was me.
I think that sentiment will sit with a lot of people that read this book, particularly those that are reaching or are in their early 30s.
This is excellent. A cautionary tale of the impact of our digital footprint, of bullying, of love, of family. I loved that I felt like I could have written this - not for my literary skills, but for our shared experiences. The endless relatability of this book will definitely impact a lot of people that read this and I am excited to see the reviews.