Book review: Wayward connection in chaos

For those new to Lockwood, 'Will There Ever Be Another You' will be a challenging and, at times, frustrating read as incidents and characters from previous books are referenced without explanation or context

Patricia Lockwood’s unique style of writing asks much of the reader with a lack of narrative structure. Picture: Getty

• Will There Ever Be Another You 
• Patricia Lockwood 
• Bloomsbury Circus, £16.99

Will There Ever Be Another You, Patricia Lockwood’s latest novel, is a fractured, chaotic text that depicts the narrator’s experience of living through long covid.

Lockwood’s previous writings include her Booker Prize-nominated first novel, No One is Talking About This and her memoir Priestdaddy. 

Both of these books earned significant critical claim and were commercially successful. Her latest release appears to assume that readers will be familiar with these works.

For those new to Lockwood, Will There Ever Be Another You will be a challenging and, at times, frustrating read. 

Incidents and characters from No One is Talking About This are referenced without explanation or context.

We meet the narrator’s family in chapter one. The husband character that Lockwood’s readers so enjoyed in her previous work is reprised. 

There are several deeply affecting references to the death of her sister’s young child — a tragedy depicted in her first novel.

Beyond that, it’s very difficult to summarise the journey that this book takes its readers on. 

The title, which carries no question mark, is apparently a reference to Time magazine’s coverage of Dolly the Sheep. 

Its relevance to the book and its characters is not explained. There is no discernable plot or narrative proposition.

We are offered a breathless series of disconnected episodes that attempt to convey the narrator’s physical and psychological spiral in the grip of an illness made all the more frightening by the fact that nobody, either in the medical profession or otherwise, seems to understand it or be in a position to offer the sufferer any hope.

Along the way, our heroine takes up metalwork, visits Paris, visits Scotland, and is plagued by people wanting to interview her. 

She has lunch with Anne Hathaway or “Shakespeare’s wife” as she’s referred to. 

This may be the actual imagined ghost of Shakespeare’s wife or a jokey reference to the Hollywood superstar, it’s hard to tell. 

Tolstoy, Mrs Doubtfire, and Kurt Russell all make appearances.

There are many, many side characters in the book but the seemingly random structure and lack of narrative combine to prevent them emerging convincingly from the chaos.

Sally Rooney has described Lockwood as “a completely singular talent”, Douglas Stuart says she is a “rare wonder”, and Namita Gokhale proclaimed her as the “voice of a generation”. 

It’s fair to say that Lockwood doesn’t suffer for lack of recognition from her peers but there’s no question that she’s a unique artist. 

Every paragraph of Will There Ever Be Another You is flawlessly crafted. Her prose is effervescent, her lead character always engaging. 

She is very, very funny yet she skillfully balances this humour; this urge to belittle serious situations, against the darker episodes of the book — the narrator’s experience of covid, her husband’s life-altering surgery, the unspeakable sadness of her niece’s death.

The author’s other life as a poet has clearly helped to shape this book and, in places, it’s easier read as a collection of unconnected prose poems.

Lockwood flouts all of the conventions of modern fiction and unapologetically blurs the distinction between author and narrator.

The book is divided into three sections and an epilogue but, whether she intended it or not, one could read the various sequences in virtually any order and it would make no difference to the overall experience of the text.

Does this matter? The late Irish American poet Michael Donaghy once told an interviewer that readers will meet an author halfway and no farther. Lockwood is asking considerably more of her readers here.