Will There Ever Be Another You

"There are a number of highly anticipated new novels just newly released, not least Patricia Lockwood’s latest, Will There Ever Be Another You . I love Patricia Lockwood. Her writing is irreverent and funny and full of non-sequiturs, yet also full of pathos and depth. You may remember her memoir, Priestdaddy , about growing up in the Midwest as the daughter of an charismatic, gun-toting Catholic priest, or her heartbreaking novel No One is Talking About This . Will There Ever Be Another You features a narrator unhinged by Long Covid, whose brain fog is modelled on symptoms experienced by Lockwood herself, as detailed in a London Review of Books diary published in 2020. (“I was under the impression that I had taken detailed notes throughout the experience,” as she recalled, “but when I opened the file called ‘quarantine’ I found it to be 158 words long and full of cryptic particles: ‘Masque of the Red Death. Statue of Pericles. Tigers.’ Fine, whatever.”) Also unmissable: this profile of Lockwood, which ran recently in the New Yorker."