Welcome to Litsy!

“I was holding more hands than I had.”

Maybe this is a sign that the vignette-y, trippy nonsense of this book has crawled its way into my skull and settled there…but the above statement feels like THE way to live your life. It‘s more than a wacky sentence; it‘s a whole ethos.

Ever feel like you needed 4 more hands? Reach out and grab some.

Despite loving Lockwood‘s memoir, Priestdaddy (one of my favorite books), I was wildly unprepared for this “novel.” I had no idea what it was! And you should absolutely know before committing yourself. Or you might end up committing yourself. 🫠

It‘s pure, stream-of-consciousness auto”fiction,” written from within the author‘s fevered brain as she suffers from Long Covid. Sometimes, she‘s also on mushrooms. It‘s as disorienting as it sounds!👇🏻

“…[She] pulls [his] hands away from his face so that the shame can run out of him and rejoin the natural blushes of the world: sunrise, sunset, fruit, flowers. No shame, no shame, I said to myself, pink peaches.”

What even is reality, anyway? A bit of that too-clever-by-half feel. Some of it an enchantment, some paranoid, some annoying. Like the COVID fever dreams she describes? Fun callbacks and wordplay. Grief, but surface? Feels like she feels like she‘s being daring, but never quite goes all the way. Sucks being sick—sorry she went through long COVID. But I bailed. 2025

18 “She walked through the world; the exchange rate stood. Everyone must pay.”

Patricia Lockwood can do no wrong…or can she?? The publisher‘s description of this book includes the term “brain-shredding” which is accurate but I found rather unpleasant, lol. A woman (seems semi-autobiographical like her fabulous No One Is Talking About This) can no longer trust her own thoughts, the result of Covid, I think? I found it too difficult to slog through the stream of consciousness strangeness. A let down. But that COVER!!

Whoa. Ok. I‘m a Patricia Lockwood fan. I loved No One is Talking About this. I love how she thinks. But I found this stream of consciousness work barely readable, too self-indulgent, too needlessly difficult, too difficult. There were parts i got and parts i liked, but mostly I forced my way through what was nearly incoherent to me. (Probably the cat understands).

⭐️⭐️⭐️.5

The first two stories really grabbed me but the rest tells almost like nonfiction at times.

If you've read any Patricia Lockwood before, you'll know she has a unique way of expressing herself. She's a singular, irreverent, poetic voice, and I respect her work.

Some of her latest writing is pure fire. Some of it is so abstract that it lacks clarity and I found it a struggle to extract meaning.

This book explores how the pandemic left her feeling detached from reality both mentally and physically.

Varies from chapter to chapter!

I will surely reread this in a few years and remain mystified and awed by Lockwood. She can be so weird and profound and vulgar and vibrant. This novel feels like a working through, ruminating in a similar vein to No One is Talking About This but ultimately more muddled and not as powerful. Still brilliant and full of unforgettable prose.