A claustrophobic travelogue of online and IRL adventures abounding with whimsical interludes, all packed taut with her signature wordplay ... She writes a lyrical and barely legible journal of holy and sacrilegious feelings, a pocketbook emptied out in search of the nation’s plot ... So singular ... Her ability to tease out the absurdity of ordinary communication is magnificent, even infuriating ... Compounded sorrow haunts the book ... Lockwood...manages to explicate the harried, nonsensical, grief-soaked timeline with acrobatic skill.
The insanity has not been edited out. This contributes to the novel’s surrealism and its gently awkward fuzziness...and also to its not inconsiderable weight and charm ... I suspect it will divide her many readers. It divided me. It lacks the sustained barrage of audacities and rascalities that defined her last novel ... The aphorisms in her new novel are not as keen, and the leaves are not raked into piles. Yet this elliptical book, often best read as poetry, can be involving and moving, and it has sharp spikes of observation ... Her writing about her public persona can also, in this novel, drift into a procession of dream-logic sentences. Her brain is no longer a sequential processor; the cheese is sliding off the cracker ... I have poked and prodded at this book because it’s the sort that invites a reader to do so. It’s a mixed success. But as a member of the rabble that likes to read novels, especially ones by writers so adept, I can’t help remaining committed to following Lockwood where she leads.
Heavy, often ponderously existential, story lines, but Lockwood’s characteristic whimsy lightens them ... Recapturing the trick that makes her tick is a convoluted journey for Patricia, and occasionally the reader ... Lockwood shows that giving in by lavishing love or solicitation on despair, depression, or disease is never the right option, because there never will be another you.
Disorienting and even disjointed ... Mimicking her character’s bewilderment, however, this novel is indeed confusing and only barely plotted. The joy of it is in Lockwood’s expansive imagination and steady command of humor, devastation, and the fine line between them.
Head-spinning ... As pictures of disordered minds go, this is striking, but also challenging to slog through. It's difficult to find concrete details to latch onto, at least between the bookends of the trips. It's not, perhaps, how newcomers should encounter Lockwood's genius, but still essential for her fans.
