Showing all posts tagged: Patricia Lockwood
Klara and the Sun wins the 2022 Tournament of Books
3 April 2022
Another gong for Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun, after winning The Morning News 2022 Tournament of Books. Ishiguro’s book went up against No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood in the final round, and emerged the victor after winning eleven votes to six.
Running every March, the Tournament of Books is like an elimination contest, and starts with a longlist of fiction titles considered to be “worthy tournament competitors” that is formed in December. From there a shortlist of sixteen, sometimes more, books is produced, before they go head to head against each other, but that’s only a brief outline of how the tournament works.
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Kazuo Ishiguro, Patricia Lockwood
No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood
22 September 2021
Quite possibly you’re connected to, on, or in the portal, as you read these words. The simplest definition of the portal would be the internet, though most likely there’s a world of difference between the two. The portal could perhaps be regarded as a hard core social media experience, one that all but consumes those who enter its purview. Does this somehow sound familiar?
No One Is Talking About This (published by Bloomsbury Circus, 16 February 2021), is the debut novel of American poet and author Patricia Lockwood. It tells the story of an unnamed social media influencer who is so caught up in the seemingly inescapable domain of the portal, she appears to have lost sight of what is meant to be the real world. This abruptly changes though when she receives word of a family emergency, and is forced to bring herself back to the here and now.
No One Is Talking About This, which has been named on the shortlist of the 2021 Booker Prize, places the protagonist in two starkly different realms, to the point the novel feels like two novels. In doing so, might the suggestion be the portal and real life can, in some way, co-exist? I don’t know; does a choice even exist?
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Booker Prize, fiction, Patricia Lockwood, TBR list, writing