Amid a global pandemic, one young woman is trying to keep the pieces together—of her family, stunned by a devastating loss, and of her mind, left mangled and misfiring from a mystifying disease. She's afraid of her own floorboards, and 'What is love? Baby don't hurt me' plays over and over in her ears. She hates her friends, or more accurately, she doesn't know who they are. Has the illness stolen her old mind and given her a new one? Does it mean she'll get to start over from scratch, a chance afforded to very few people?
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.
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.
