This is a clever way of commenting upon the effects of the internet in the very structure of the way Lockwood tells her tale. It's also reflective of the distracted attention span that comes from scrolling online and how concepts can be compressed down into crystallised pithy thoughts before being quickly abandoned for a new idea or trending discussion. Here Lockwood uses it to show how the internet has modified her narrator's sense of self to become both individual and collective.

It's an intriguing and surprisingly poignant style of narrative similar to Jenny Offill's novels.

The text is divided into brief sections which give an impressionistic sense of her life and the people within it without ever providing a completely clear picture. This is a story about an online personality who has become so famous on platforms like twitter for tweets such as “ Can a dog be twins?” that she travels around the world giving talks and lectures. And so, I merrily plunged into reading Lockwood's “No One is Talking About This” because suddenly (at least within my online bubble) everyone seems to be talking about this debut novel. Oh, so I had heard of her! Or, at least, I saw mention of her on these lists and was intrigued but (like hundreds of other writers) haven't got around to reading her work yet. The abbreviated biographical understanding I got from the succinct biography provided on wikipedia was that she first gained fame on twitter (having successfully baited publications like The Paris Review into joining in jokey banter), published two collections of poems as well as the poem “Rape Joke” which went viral in 2013 and the memoir “Priestdaddy” in 2017 which the Times included on its list “The 50 Best Memoirs of the Past 50 Years” and the Guardian named as one of its “100 Best Books of the 21st Century”. *epic fail* Of course, whenever someone is trending who everyone seems to love but I've not heard of or couldn't recall I did the thing you're meant to do and googled her. I wasn't even aware of Patricia Lockwood.

As soon as I saw the online hype surrounding Patricia Lockwood's debut novel I knew I was out of touch with the internet.

No one is talking about this novel