It's difficult to review such a strange, meandering, dense, clever and emotive book in a way that might be helpful to other people, I read it very quickly and experienced the whole thing like a fever dream. If you enjoy Lockwood's other writing, my guess is that you'll love this. Highly recommended and thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with an e-copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

There are fragments of this book that I really loved and there are fragments that I didn't care for all that much. While I enjoyed the experience of reading - there is much beaufiful language and turns of phrase I loved (and this earns the book its 4*) - unfortunately, it didn't quite come together for me in the end. Having said that, I do think that the book does what it sets out to do: depict cognitive dissonance and difficulties in rendering a cohesive world/self.

in her latest novel, lockwood mines her pandemic and post-pandemic experiences to chart the course of a woman going mad, losing her thought process and ability to write, and slowly coming back to a changed reality.

this is a strange, confounding book which ultimately was not for me. i liked nobody is talking about this and did not mind it's narrative looseness, but where that work is fragmented, this is disjointed and sprawling to the point of relative incoherence. i don't mind having to settle into a particular rhythm of storytelling but i really struggled to see what story was being told here - and i do need something, personally. there is, very often, a stand out sentence or paragraph but they slip out of your grasp too quickly, and i just found too much to be bored by, sadly!

*arc received from netgalley for review, out in sept*

I REALLY wanted to love this book. Patricia Lockwood's chaotic comic memoir Priestdaddy was one of my favourite reads of the last few years, and the first chapter of Will There Ever Be Another You initially gave me similar vibes, but eventually the self-consciously quirky narrative style irritated me. It's a very specific kind of writing which screams 'I got my creative writing MFA from a prestigious American college' and doesn't pay much attention to such minor things as plot or readability (think Maggie Nelson's Bluets - and again, I love some of Nelson's work!). There's so much to admire here in terms of craft, but it's just ultimately not a lot of fun to read.

After hearing so many positive things about Patricia Lockwood’s books, I was eager to finally experience one for myself; however, ‘Will There Ever Be Another You’ reads at worst like an automatic writing exercise and at best like you’ve drunk too much WKD, dropped acid and gone on a high-speed waltzer.

The one lucid moment, where I felt I actually grasped what was going on, was in the exchange: “They bred the sunflowers to look the way van Gogh saw them.” / “A book, especially, tried to force you to see things—tried to breed you, in short, like a sunflower.”

It feels like this book is trying to force the reader to see a certain (unhinged) mental state, and while the author succeeds in this aim, to me, it does not make for an enjoyable or enlightening read. It isn’t that I have anything against experimental books or those that are on the more arty and inaccessible end of ‘literary’, but I need to feel like all that arty experimentation is actually Saying Something—that the author has a point and is using this departure from standard form as a means to express it. ‘Will There Ever Be Another You’ feels like it is being arty and experimental for arty and experimental’s sake; I didn’t take anything from it, or come away from it feeling changed in any way.

There are certainly some great and funny moments—and throughout, at the line level, the writing is undoubtedly excellent—but for me those moments are restricted to the references I could actually get, and there are just too many that I didn’t get. It feels like being on the outside of an in-joke every other paragraph, and it soon becomes tiring. By the sixty per cent mark, I was just willing the book to end.

Overall, I think it’s safe to say this book wasn’t for me. I think anyone hoping for something even vaguely resembling story or coherence will do better to steer clear of it. However, if you’re up for a fever dream of automatic poetry that just keeps going and going and going, this might just be the right read for you.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Patricia Lockwood and Bloomsbury Publishing Plc for the ARC. My review will be posted on Instagram, Amazon UK, Goodreads and The StoryGraph near or on the publication date.

I really enjoyed this writer's memoir and previous novel and expected work in a similar vein. This is a mad, experimental novel that departs from form. It's like having some kind of strange trip or fever dream. It reminded me of reading modernist fiction from the Twentieth Century..

I definitely didn't enjoy this but equally I didn't hate it. There was joy just in reading the prose. This is something unconventional and poetic that I found incomprehensible at times but beautiful at others.

Patricia Lockwood is a genius. I love her writing. I love her books and I was so excited to read this book. It's why I was disappointed that this one didn't quite hit the mark for me. It's clever and well written and there are sections where the writing flew and all the feelings I got from reading her previous work came rushing forward and then there was a disconnect where the connection dropped. I felt that this was a book of almost endless beginnings, no middle and no conclusion. It's smart and literary and will no doubt be lauded, but for me the spark wasn't there.

This is the first Patricia Lockwood book I have read … and to say it is unique is an understatement.

Several times the desire to stop the book was strong; the perseverance took hold and onwards …

At one point, a quick read of other reviews was required.. was something obvious being missed? No. Bewilderment prevailed with others

The plot.. and that’s the crux ..no idea really.. this a book that makes you feel as though you’ve slipped into Alice’s Wonderland.. a series of poetically described events moving between first person and third person. A portal is occasionally mentioned and that is how this book felt - a dance between portals - locations, events, ages, and all sorts of states of mind.

Autofiction is presented - autobiographical fiction ..if this is a response to Covid lockdown then it certainly is self expression in an extreme and magical form. A journey through the mind.

How do you rate this type of book? There is a craft and art in the pages but if you want a linear plot or even a time slip narrative with a plot that grips then this will be a challenge.

A journey from a unique voice … baffled, bemused and bewildered but somehow intrigued

Will There Ever Be Another You is a new autofiction novel from Patricia Lockwood, focused around health and art, human connection and the connection between words in your brain. Written in sections that move rapidly between topics and ideas, it's almost impossible to describe this book in any normal summary, but it is densely packed with allusions and jokes alongside explorations of chronic illness, grief, and the line between fiction and reality.

I really wanted to get this book more than I did. When I did recognise who Lockwood was talking about (Susanna Clarke being one example) or when I got a joke (I loved the reference to her cat being carceral, after Lockwood's infamous tweet about her cat Miette), it was thrilling. I've read No One Is Talking About This, Priestdaddy, and also some of Lockwood's poetry, and I enjoyed those (especially her poetry), but I found Will There Ever Be Another You just so disparate that whilst there were parts I felt were engaging, other parts I struggled to get through. In that way, it is pretty effective to get across one of Lockwood's major themes, exploring the effects of illness on your brain and mental processes.

Some of the sections where I felt like I was getting into it were the first part with its hazy picture of grief and travel and the section about her husband's surgery and the idea of his 'Wound'. Other parts felt like I needed to know more of the references to get it (for example, there's a section about Anna Karenina which I've only read when I was 17, many years ago, and it felt like I needed to remember it better).

I feel like if I reread No One Is Talking About This and maybe her other works and articles about her, I could perhaps reread Will There Ever Be Another You and get it better. I liked that the different parts and sections meant that I didn't need to always follow a previous section to dive into another (again, interesting as an idea about mental processes). However, I just know that I missed a lot and I'm sure other people will be able to get a lot more from the book than I could. Regardless, I found it a fascinating example of writing yourself into fiction, and doing it in a way that really does not feel like straightforward memoir.

Patricia Lockwood is author of (among much else): the award winning cult memoir “Priestdaddy”, a series of poems including the viral hit “Rape Joke”, one of the all time great literary tweets, regular London Review of Books articles and (the thing I most know her for) her auto fictional debut novel “No One Is Talking About This” (which mixed a tale of an acutely online life with the story of Lockwood’s Proteus Syndrome sufferer niece) which was was one of the relatively small number of books ever shortlisted for the Booker and Women’s Prize (in this case in the lockdown years of 2021) and was the winner of the 2022 Dylan Thomas Prize.

At the shortlist readings for the Booker Prize – my daughter Mollie (then aged 15) and I were in the socially distanced audience and Mollie submitted a question "In a world threatened by climate change, inequality, racism and COVID do we really need more factual writing. Or would the authors argue that engaged fiction is more important than ever.” which to our delight was asked by the chair of the panel (Alex Clarke).

Anuk Arudpragasam (“Passage North” – who I had earlier interviewed on Radio 4 Front Row) surprisingly gave a fairly pessimistic answer querying the power of fiction given everything he witnessed in the world, whereas tousle haired Richard Powers (“Bewilderment”) gave a brilliantly upbeat message. Patricia Lockwood observed but did not answer.

So when reading this novel – again very auto fictional, and dealing with, among much else, the family’s still mourning for the brief life of her sister’s daughter and Lockwood’s own long-COVID (after catching the virus very early on) – I was really enjoying a passage when – without actually specifying – the narrator somewhat hesitantly travels to London (and Bristol) for both the (delayed) Women’s Prize and Booker Prize events, when to my absolute amazed delight I read this passage:

"I am split apart; I can see their souls, I think again, they sit in bright curves on the tops of their heads; when they speak a pin pricks my lungs and all the air rushes out; my heart is going two hundred beats a minute; one has no hope and I love him, another has hope like fever and I see myself smoothing his hair; a child of fifteen sent in the queston, I myself never utter a word, about whether fiction is justified, about whether we can add white ice back to the world; and I sit in the bright light melting, melting toward Mollie, fifteen, who had asked."

Which is by way of saying this was a guaranteed 5 star read after that

For literary prize fans there are also references in the same passage to eventual Women’s Prize winner Susanna Clark – and a shared love of stuffed pigs – and immediately after the Mollie reference Damon Galgut and how Lockwood knew he had won the Booker, and an interaction with Rowan Williams – a judge that year). The surrounding passages feature (with varying levels of attribution) an online LRB event with John Lanchester, a Guardian interview with Hadley Freedman (Lockwood not a fan when she later found out her views on gender) and a rather bizarre LitHub review of her work by Mary Gordon as well as many other references to interviews/encounters I was less able to trace.

The novel is written in three parts.

The first is written in the third person (although clearly still autobiographical) and is stylistically, thematically (including a nicely picked up reference to her sister losing her phone – the first novel effectively ending with the narrator’s phone being lifted and in both cases the myriad pictures of the late daughter/niece being the main concern of the loss) and narratively a direct sequel to “No One Is Talking About This” – the narrator holidaying in Scotland with her husband, mother and sister later in the same year that the latter’s child was lost. The first part of this story – Fairy Pools – was effectively published as a stand alone story in the New Yorker where in the accompanying article Lockwood said

"The writing of “Fairy Pools” came about halfway through the process of writing “Will There Ever Be Another You”—which I describe as my attempt to write “a masterpiece about being confused,” something no one has ever tried before. “Fairy Pools” clarified things when I embarked on it, because I saw that perhaps the strangeness that the main character experiences, the strangeness on which the whole book turns, had begun earlier than I thought. In short, this woman is geeted to the gills on clam neurotoxin and the world begins to seem unfamiliar to her. But even before that, the world had started to seem unfamiliar to her because of her grief. So when I started writing “Fairy Pools,” it streamlined something in the narrative that had been a little amorphous, a little unclear. It provided the arc, ultimately, that leads through to the end of the novel."

That reference to strangeness and clams is to a food poisoning incident that occurred on the trip and in the second section of this part “The Changeling” the strangeness is instead from a form of long COVID contracted very early on in the pandemic, which takes the form of mental displacement and bizarre accompanying physical (or often mentally experienced) symptoms of switching/disappearance from which in her trademark style – one perhaps exacerbated by the COVID symptoms and also aimed for in the author’s attempt to “write about being confused” – Lockwood free associates from Alzheimer’s to Cabbage Patch dolls to moon-landing truthers to Van Gogh to Galaopogas.

The second section reverts to the first person – the second part of which “The Artist is Present” is where all the literary sections above appear, but this is a varied and sometimes bewildering kaleidoscopic section of varying writing styles and one where the narrator sometimes blurs art (movies, TV series, books) into her experienced reality, one best I think described by the author

"I describe [the novel] as a mirror ball, a hyperobject, a Louis Wain cat, where you’re trying to see every facet of something at once. It’s about the task of trying to put the writing mind back together. And, in my own life, that includes criticism, it includes poetry, it includes travel narratives, it includes fiction, it includes the strange beast that we refer to as the lyric essay. After having COVID, I had to figure out how to do it all again. In the course of writing “Will There Ever Be Another You,” eventually I was able to put those forms of writing back together—with the exception of poetry. One thing I definitely wanted to do was to show not only [the illness and associated mental state], but then the process of rebuilding yourself, rebuilding your ability to read, to write. I wanted to include a lot of different kinds of writing to show that you had to rebuild that on a number of levels. I understood that I was learning to write again, and I would have to write in a different way, and I needed to adopt a new style to convey certain aspects of it: the repetitions you would hear in your head"

The third section mixes first and second person – the opening second person sections refer to her husband’s Jason’s gut surgery (hemicolectomy after a caecal flop) – surgery which proves(d) more complicated than anticipated and a subsequent first party section to her participation in a metal sculpting class. Later there is a long passage in a seminar of biographical writers (I believe a 2024 one “The Art of Biography” at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) - – she only realising shortly before she speaks that her biographical subject was herself (in Priestdaddy) just of course as her novelistic subject is here, and an interview with (I think) Ricardo Ramos Gonçalves (although that was in 2019).

And the novel ends rather enigmatically with a section where the narrator invents her own cryptid – but perhaps appropriately as this is a novel which draws heavily on the contradiction of the reality of cognitive dissonance.

I am going to be honest in this review like I always am and I really didn’t get this novel. I honestly didn’t understand the majority of this novel and I have zero idea what happened in it. This just isn’t my kind of story

2.75 stars

I really wish I had more positive feedback. I was so excited to get my hands on this book because I absolutely loved No One is Talking About This, but I’m afraid this follow-up was rather a disappointment. Lockwood attempts to replicate the wacky stream-of-consciousness narration style that I enjoyed in her previous book, but the issue is that it isn’t fully rooted to any major event (like the birth of the baby in NOITAT), rather jumping from topic to topic, which made the narrative feel disjointed and without purpose. Sorry, but I’m really not interested in reading ten pages about the author’s experience at a metal casting class.

Something I did feel Lockwood did very well was writing the experience of brain fog as a result of long Covid. The feeling of being detached from one’s body and frequently confused does match the often confusing narration style, but the fact that it carries on for so long does make for a very frustrating read. I also enjoyed the chapters about the husband’s health scare and the author’s subsequent anxieties, and had that been the rooting plot point for the rest of the book, I think I would have enjoyed it a little more.

Overall, this was a disappointing read that I just didn’t get. If you’re a massive fan of no plot just vibes books, though, give it a try.

I thought I was going to love this but unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it. I can appreciate that it was beautiful, modern and interesting but I just have no idea what I just read. I would find it impossible to say what happened in the novel. The incoherence made it quite uncomfortable to read as I just kept thinking, am I losing my mind? Am I not able to read and make sense of things anymore? Why am I not getting this? Wait who is this referring to? Where are we?

Will There Ever Be Another You follows a young woman as time and memories pass through her body. Fiction and reality blend together but there is a possibility for human connection.

I am going to be honest in this review like I always am and I really didn’t get this novel. I honestly didn’t understand the majority of this novel and I have zero idea what happened in it. This just isn’t my kind of story. It’s supposed to feel disorientating and for me it just didn’t make sense. I didn’t like it but plenty of others will. It is written well, just not the story for me. It kind of just felt like random sentences to me. That’s why I’m not rating this on Goodreads because I don’t want to negatively impact this novel when it’s just not my type of book.

I had really high hopes for this, but it genuinely felt like I was reading a series of unrelated sentences.

Will There Ever Be Another You by Patricia Lockwood is an absolute delight. She writes so perceptively and intelligently. As soon as I finished reading it I wanted to read it again. Fresh and raw and thought-provoking.

“A little wisdom rose to me: there is always some puke on the text. Heartening, too, to realise there were other custodians. That anyone could care about paper so much, even beyond what was written on it”

Patricia Lockwood is a genius, undisputedly. Her follow up to 2021’s No One Is Talking About This is a confusing novel, with flashes of brilliance, and an incredible amount of jokes that made me howl with laughter. One of those novels that made me feel pretty stupid - I simply don’t think I am on Lockwood’s level, tbh.

It’s tricky to even sum up what this is about. A young woman - who might be Patricia herself, or might be someone else - tries to get through life during the pandemic. She gets sick with Covid, and develops some pretty frightening neurological issues as a result. She falls into the realm of the sick, and spends a long, long time dragging herself out. The novel is about this time, as well as the grief the author feels after the death of her niece, her tricky relationship with her father, and her love for her husband, who also becomes unwell over the course of the novel.

It was surreal and confusing at first but once I got into the rhythm of it, I had a whale of a time. Lockwood is brilliant at pulling out the humour and surrealism in deeply grim situations; her protagonist faces many of these in the novel but the jokes abound. I did find WIll There Ever Be Another You uneven, though - once I thought I was in the groove of it, it felt like Lockwood had pulled the rug from under me. Which is maybe the point about a book about scary, new, disabling illness!

Patricia Lockwood's last novel was barely a novel – the narrator was famous for a tweet about a dog rather than a cat, but that seemed to be about the limit of the identifiable divergence from reality. Maybe it's just that publishers feel uneasy with 'memoir' unless it's another supermarket-sellable slab of plainly expressed celebrity revelations, or worse, a Personal Journey. No One Is Talking About This, on the other hand, was a buzzing cascade of hyperbole, referentiality, stray thoughts, that much-abused term 'stream of consciousness' converging with the internet's firehose, Woolf's attempt to catch each fleeting moment on a chain of words if she'd lived into the age of Twitter and been able to bear more than a day of it. And this has even less deniability, as a protagonist called Patricia Lockwood deals with situations (her husband's medical emergency, a TV adaptation of her memoir, most of all long COVID) which we know also apply to the real Patricia Lockwood, at least unless all those LRB articles and such have been an ingenious viral marketing campaign all along. But beyond sales categories, the important thing is that for all she laments the ways in which brain and words betrayed her in the aftermath of the plague, for all that between that and ceasing to be quite so thoroughly online her style has definitely changed and maybe even, whisper it, shifted a fraction closer to the litfic mainstream, she remains Patricia fucking Lockwood, synaesthete, poet (and more so in poetry than prose, for my money), probably the only person on Earth who could get away with a sentence like "The summer before, I had tried to rewire my brain with mushrooms, but succeeded mainly in becoming temporarily psychic and reading Anna Karenina so hard I almost died."

+Netgalley ARC)