Worry is paced like the internet: Petty micro-dramas create a sense of movement, but mostly nothing happens ... Tanner, adept in the argot of the hyper-online inert... skewers the girls’ lassitude while remaining sensitive to the inevitable ennui of modern life.
Paced like the internet: petty micro-dramas create a sense of movement, but mostly nothing happens ... Tanner, adept in the argot of the hyper-online inert...skewers the girls’ lassitude while remaining sensitive to the inevitable ennui of modern life.
Not a ton happens by way of plot (save for an ending few will see coming), but thanks to Tanner’s conversational and darkly funny prose, it works. Plus, many readers will find that the monotony of Jules and Poppy’s lives mimics those weird late-20s feelings of floundering ... Encapsulates a uniquely millennial malaise and solidifies Alexandra Tanner as a writer to watch.
The book was pitched as Seinfeldian—and sometimes the plot leans too far in that direction. With so few other characters given meaningful development across the novel’s 300 pages, our universe is restricted to Jules and Poppy, both of whom are prone to navel-gazing and self-sabotage ... Still, if the scope feels claustrophobic and repetitive, it is a testament to Tanner’s realism—because isn’t life as an internet addict claustrophobic and repetitive? ... The dialogue is spot-on, the anxieties real and compelling, and the prose is understated but assured. Present-tense sentences plop out at a zippy clip, until suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Tanner lets rip a long, beautiful, multi-clauser, and the reader is left reeling under the weight of Jules’s neuroses.
Often reads like a pandemic novel, illuminating the personal and communal choices illness forces upon us ... That discovery doesn’t usher the sisters into some utopian state: Poppy’s hives persist undiagnosed, and Jules remains lethargic and under-employed into the very last page. But they do start to see the possibility of a life sustained by care, and not just in moments of crisis.
A darkly comical literary debut ... A time capsule of a novel that captures a moment not yet over ... Tanner pulls off the highwire act of both letting readers think they know more than Jules, while simultaneously making them stare at their own reflection ... Consuming this novel in a world no longer on the brink of disaster but deep in the abyss of it, readers will find themselves familiar with this fear, and both startled and touched by Tanner's depiction of it.
Heart-piercing ... This is a stinging yet joyful story about life playing out online or nowhere and the family we can’t stand and can’t stand the thought of losing, which can also mean ourselves.
