Title: No One is Talking About This

Series: N/A

Author: Patricia Lockwood

Genres: Literary

Publishing Date: 16 February 2021

Original Language: English

Pages: ~210

CW: Child death, Grief, Terminal illness, Abortion, Pregnancy, Medical content, Ableism, Rape

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This award winning debut novel just didn’t hit for me the way that I wanted it to. We follow an unnamed main character, through two sections of the book. The first part is written in a stream of consciousness style with the protagonist exploring her relationship to her own internet persona and her career as an internet personality and influencer, after she unexpectedly went viral. This section was interesting, and reads sort of like a social media feed, with Lockwood exploring how we live in this interconnected way with our constructed identities.

The second part of the book takes place mostly at a hospital, as the protagonist’s niece is born with an extremely rare disease and is not expected to live long. She abandons her internet life and spends her time with her sister and the baby, trying to get as much time with her niece as she can before the end. This part of the book is, as you would expect, very emotional and upsetting. It’s semi-autobiographical, as Lockwood went through a similar experience in her own life. I’m sure to a lot of people this section would really hit home for them, but I just didn’t feel that way. As a disabled person, some of the writing in this section felt ableist to me. I felt a little bit icky the way that her niece was described in some places, so that’s why I couldn’t get fully on board with it.

However, as I mentioned, this book has won several awards and was nominated for a Booker Prize, so you may find something in it that I didn’t, especially in the inventive and fresh writing style.