I started, I thought, This is stupid!  I continued anyway not understanding more than a hint and a glimmer of maybe some kind of setting and a character. Slowly a bit more setting set in and then another character.  Very odd but it’s very nicely written, funny in places and very well narrated, I guess, but what is it? There’s something here which is compelling.

So it took time and some curiosity and I persevered. It’s a good thing the book is only 200+ pages long. 

No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
2021 / (207 pp)
read by Kristen Sieh 4h 43m
Rating: 9.75

And then it clicked. And it is totally timely. Almost too timely for comfort. And the tension in the last 1/3 or 1/4 of the book is way too high for me to go to bed.  

Our 3rd person female narrator (named 1 time as Linda) is browsing the internet (I think) and finds a wide variety of bizarity via “the portal.” There is natural scenery and politics and general harassment.  The Dictator, yes, they have one, is very funny to her.  She has no focus or concentration span.  Her profound thoughts are worse than ridiculous.  There is an Anonymous History Channel which shows footage of millions of people on the march. And the general feeling is that it’s “A great shame about all of it.”  This character, Linda?, sounds really stoned to me. 

She says that eavesdropping is a big problem. The women all have the same scar on their knee but it’s not the same because one white person is different. That one is whisked away. Maybe the portal caused the Dictator.  

No One Is Talking About This got many awards including a Short List spot on the Booker List.  And it got tons of rave reviews – check Amazon.
https://tinyurl.com/m6bd636y

I think you need to read this book. I should maybe read it again.