Read Of The Week (March 14 to March 20)

This promises to be is a classic book for our times about what it feels like to live and think online.

A woman known for her viral social media posts travels the world speaking to her adoring fans, her entire existence overwhelmed by the internet — or what she terms ‘the portal’. 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 increasing absurdity 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.

Irreverent and sincere, poignant and delightfully profane, No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood is at once a love letter to the infinite scroll and a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time.