2021 Booker Prize Longlist: No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood

This thread is for discussion of No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood. No unhidden spoilers, please.

This is one that I am really excited about. I see from the reviews that people either LOVE it or HATE it and I can understand why. For some (including me), the style is odd and off-putting, but once you finish the novel, you see that this is the only way it could have been written. It also deals with a sensitive topic so I can see how that might turn someone off. But overall I think this is such an important book, especially in this age of social media and social isolation.

My blurb from another thread:

I read this months ago and I am still thinking about it. Absolutely blown away by this book. At first it really irritated me. I don't have a lot to do with social media and have never used Twitter, so when I realised that the novel was written as if each thought was a tweet, I almost stopped right away. But, the Pearl Rule prevailed (and I paid money for this one so I wasn't going to let it go without a fight), and I am SO glad I did. I won't say a lot about the story, as that would give too much away, but it had to be written in the style it was. Anything else wouldn't have had the same power behind it. It's also nominated for the Women's Prize so I really hope that it takes at least one.

I'd love to hear what others think.

I read this because it was on the Wonen’s Prize for Fiction list, and I enjoyed it. I liked the first part. I thought it was clever. Note that I read far too much Twitter so I 'got’ that part, but a whole book of that would have been too much, too gimmicky. So when the second part happened, it worked. The clever/Twitter stuff had been enough and the change to real life was satisfying. As I’m sure it is for Twitter users who break free from that world, even if real life is sadder and more upsetting.
Much like yourself, I found myself thinking of the book after I’d finished it, always the sign of a good book.

Here’s a link to an article called All the Meme’s in No One is Talking About This explained. Just adds a bit more to the experience, especially if you aren’t aware of all the references.

https://lithub.com/all-the-memes-in-patricia-lockwoods-no-one-is-talking-about-t...

>3 raidergirl3:. Oh! I like that article - thanks! I got some of the references, but definitely missed a lot.

I agree that she cut the first section off at the right point. My laughter was starting to wane. But then the second section hits you like a Mac truck. The stark difference between make-believe and reality was spot on.

This amusing quote from Patricia Lockwood about No One Is Talking About This comes from a post on the Booker Prize's Facebook timeline, with the hashtag #FunFactFriday:

“The first draft of this book was largely written with my finger, in a doc file on my phone. I don’t recommend it. The first finger on my right hand is actually bigger than the rest of them now, like those guys who do professional arm wrestling.”

Well, I absolutely hated this book, and gave it ½ star, only because LibraryThing doesn't permit zero or negative stars. My review, which is filled with spoilers, is on the book's home page on LT, and on my current Club Read thread; I won't post it here.

“Why were we all writing like this now? Because a new kind of connection had to be made,” the narrator mentions in this book, while being some kind of influencer, ever present on “the platform” and travelling the world to talk about it. And then the world turns silent in the second half. A world without social media and with a completely different kind of connection. A very emotional book. It touched me deeply.

>6 kidzdoc: Wow, you defitinely didn't like it!