No One Is Talking About This

Patricia Lockwood is one of the most exciting, original and lauded young voices in literature today. No One is Talking About This is her debut novel, and completely reinvents the novel as we know itA fusion of Sally Rooney and Jia Tolentino, in the Sheila Heti tradition of a novel from life, No One is Talking About This mixes humour and absurdity with a deeply intelligent understanding of what's happening in our culture todayLockwood's 2017 memoir, Priestdaddy, was named one of the 100 best books of the 21st century by the Guardian and was chosen fifteen times as a book of the year, with standout reviews across the UK press: 'Glorious' (Sunday Times), 'Laugh-out-loud funny' (The Times), 'Extraordinary' (Observer), 'Exceptional' (Telegraph), 'Dazzling' (Guardian)Patricia Lockwood is the author of four books, including the 2021 novel No One Is Talking About This, an international bestseller which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction, and translated into 20 languages. Her 2017 memoir Priestdaddy won the Thurber Prize for American Humor and was named one of the Guardian's 100 best books of the 21st century. She also has two poetry collections, Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (2014) and Balloon Pop Outlaw Black (2012). Lockwood's work has appeared in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the London Review of Books, where she is a contributing editor. She lives in Savannah, Georgia.'A masterpiece' Guardian 'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney 'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail 'I can't remember the last time I laughed so much reading a book' David Sedaris 'It moved me to tears' Elizabeth Day THE ONLY BOOK SHORTLISTED FOR BOTH THE BOOKER PRIZE AND THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2021 ______________________________________________ This is a story about a life lived in two halves. It's about what happens when real life collides with the increasing absurdity of a world accessed through a screen. It's about living in world that contains both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary. It's a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time. ______________________________________________ 'An utterly distinctive mixture of depth, dazzling linguistic richness, anarchic wit and raw emotional candour' Rowan Williams A 2021 Book of the Year: Sunday Times, Guardian, Daily Mail, Telegraph, Evening Standard, The Times, New Statesman, Red, Observer, Independent, Daily Telegraph The first novel from master of the zeitgeist Patricia Lockwood, No One is Talking About This is a classic book for our times about what it feels like to live and think onlineI have been in headlong love with Patricia Lockwood's hilarious and subversive mind since her memoir Priestdaddy, but her first novel, No One Is Talking About This, sent me reeling. Everything about this book is testament to her wicked geniusI finally read No One Is Talking About This after everyone recommending it to me all year, and I'm so, so happy I did. Please, please read this bookLockwood is an incontrovertibly gifted writer. Her sentences are routinely surprising, her voice a startling agglomeration of poetic clarity and hectic comedyOften filthy and irreverent, sometimes extremely funny, and ultimately surprisingly poignant, No One Is Talking About This offers more proof of Lockwood's particular geniusA work that feels intensely relevant to our fractured time . . . Wonderfully intricateLockwood has paid attention more closely than perhaps any other human on earth to what it's like to be alive right nowAstonishing . . . No One Is Talking About This will frighten you, implicate you, and scrape your guts out, in the best way possibleLockwood's conceit is smart, her prose original, hugely entertaining and witty . . . It is a story, simply, about love, selfless and delightedA smart and sharp book that is both addictive and deeply unsettlingWhat begins as an ironical story about irony becomes an intimate and moving portrait of love and grief. In this way, a novel that had been toying with the digital surface of modern life finds the tender heart pumping away beneath it allReading Patricia Lockwood feels like looking through a kaleidoscope built by a mischievous sorcerer - the world is suddenly rearranged in fragments that are cosmic, wondrous, humiliating, and profane. No One Is Talking About This is a furiously original novel, alive and unstable; the book builds to a reminder of how devastation and connection produce each other, endlessly and surprisingly, both on the internet and in human places that our shared digital consciousness can never reachLockwood is a phenomenal writer who is a keen observer of . . . the fragility of the human heartHilarious, affectionate and deeply-felt. There is nothing that Lockwood - and I don't say this lightly - can't doA delightfully weird look at our service to the internet (fitting in a year that gave us the "doomscroll") and human connection and intersectionA formidably gifted writer who can do pretty much anything she pleasesThe first half is a series of unbelievably accurate and funny and insightful takes on what it means to live in the internet of the modern age, and the second half swivels and becomes a kind of personal, family dynamic . It moved me to tearsThe poet and essayist turns her hand to fiction in this fragmentary tale that addresses urgent questions about the absurdity of the digital worldAn eagerly awaited novel . . . about a woman whose life is overwhelmed by the internetSet to be one of 2021's biggest books . . . rivetingI really admire and love this book. Patricia Lockwood is a completely singular talent and this is her best, funniest, weirdest, most affecting work yet