Yeah, right. And by the way, what does empowerment mean? I don’t feel f**king empowered every time I use a f**king tampon.’ Grace’s voice is loud beside me. I refresh the feed every minute and continue to consume, growing fat. I’m like a vampire, leeching off the content of other people’s lives. Sending my huge thanks to Canongate Books and NetGalley for providing me with an e-ARC in exchange for an honest review, and to the author for writing this gem of a book that I will reference and cherish for a long time! I leave the bathroom and go to the kitchen. I drink two full glasses of water, standing at the sink by myself. Through the window, Finn smiles as someone takes a photo of him. I refresh my feed until he posts it, scrolling past photos of people’s dissertations and images of some war crime taking place somewhere in the world. When I see Finn’s face, I stop for just a moment and use my thumbs to zoom in. He’s captioned it boys’ night out, even though that’s obviously not what this is. I put my phone away without liking the photo and grab the bowl of crisps Grace left out on the counter. They’re not my favourite flavour, but I eat them anyway. The bowl shakes in my hand. I wipe the dust from my fingers on my jeans.

None of This Is Serious: familiar but different – The Irish Times None of This Is Serious: familiar but different – The Irish Times

a b "Billy Bragg Sings Songs Of Protest". Philadelphia Daily News. 1988-05-29 . Retrieved 2013-07-15. Prasifka gathers many of the ills of living in Dublin – and Ireland, by extension – in her arching portrayal of a young Irish life, chief among them the housing crisis, climate change and the fledgling openness of a post-8th amendment society. While the existential angst of young people may seem like well-trodden ground, Prasifka puts her own spin on it, and what begins as a coming-of-age story with a love triangle grows into a more sophisticated reflection on our times. She is an astute observer of the social dynamics of her generation: “The conversation breaks down into an argument that no one really wants to have, where everyone’s arguing the same side, as is our custom.” Sundays are all about books and coffee, who's with me? The Archives The Archives Search by Category

I didn’t realise before I started it but None of This is Serious looks at themes of social anxiety and how it hard it is to navigate the real verses digital world. To be honest, it was a comfort to have a lead character more neurotic than I was feeling at the time.

None of This Is Serious by Catherine Prasifka - Canongate

I nod and someone calls her name from the kitchen. She tells me I can dump my stuff wherever and that she’ll see me in there. She skips down the hallway. Instead of shoes, she’s wearing fuzzy slippers. MyHome.ie (Opens in new window) • Top 1000 • The Gloss (Opens in new window) • Recruit Ireland (Opens in new window) • Irish Times Training (Opens in new window)An extraordinary novel. None of This Is Serious brilliantly explores the impossibility to “come of age” in end times, where screens are so contiguous to experience that no-one is ever truly online or offline. She writes truthfully and with affectless nuance about the labyrinthine workings of friend groups and the defences women scramble for in a world that still hates us” I inhaled None of This Is Serious. I’ve been waiting for a fictional story that reflects the all-consuming influence that the Internet has on my life. None of This Is Serious is that story. A compulsively readable, fresh and painfully accurate description of the way we live now. Don’t let the title fool you. It is serious. Seriously good’ None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It's about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything. Certainly, our friendships say a great deal about who we are as people. Those with whom we keep company are reflections of ourselves. In this case, I think that Grace is a reflection of who Sophie is to herself. She is often times condescending, & rude, but is ultimately set on seeing something come of all the grunge that takes place on the daily. Grace is simultaneously someone who comes across as being ‘too much’ & ‘not enough’ which is fascinating given that every other character in this book fits snuggly into one only category. Sophie’s parents were never enough, they abandoned their child whilst she lived in their home. Every other member of Sophie’s friend group is too much themselves to be very much of anything for anyone else. The author choses an interesting way to not only include social media in the novel, but to flesh out her narrator. Direct quotes only come from secondary characters, while Sophie’s dialogue is merged into her internal dialogue, with responses from other characters the only way to distinguish a thought from a statement.