Hardcover, 224 pages
English language
Published Feb. 15, 2021 by Riverhead Books.
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans.
She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts.
When existential threats — from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness — begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything.
“Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"
Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone …
As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans.
She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms "the portal," where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts.
When existential threats — from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness — begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal's void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything.
“Are we in hell?" the people of the portal ask themselves. "Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?"
Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: "Something has gone wrong," and "How soon can you get here?" As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.
Fragmentary and omniscient, incisive and sincere, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the endless scroll and a profound, modern meditation on love, language, and human connection from a singular voice in American literature.
Critiquing social media obsession with the steadiness of a fidget spinner and exploring grief in a way that would make Harambe proud. Full review here
I can see that this is a good book, and I cried a lot to it. Just, it's not the kind of book I was hoping to read. I was too annoyed by the tales from the internet, and then it got even more real life, which I was trying to avoid.
Stream of consciousness social media snarkiness meets the Proteus syndrome.
What happens when you are caught up in a world of self-important snarky social media memes, and then you run into something that challenges all you've ever thought about the meaning of life?
This is a powerful story, at times a little uneven, well work the read, especially for people that spend a lot of time online.
Brilliant and moving. I saw the book described as almost poetry, and I think that characterizes it well. It took me a little while to get into the rhythm of it, but then I enjoyed it a lot. She does an amazing job of dealing with a family tragedy and also capturing how our lives are now (both online and otherwise), including existence in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Incredibly sad in parts, but also very funny and it frequently had me laughing out loud. I'm so glad I read it.
crushing and beautiful and accurate and I can't wait to read (and cry through) it again
I'm very curious how someone who isn't extremely online would read this novel, but for me it was probably the most honest articulation of the experience of living with online? But also living with the weirdness and grief and absurdity and poetry of These Times, more generally. I want more books like this.
