Greta Dieck delivers a piercing critique of Patricia Lockwood's latest novel, arguing that the book's celebrated disorientation is less a profound artistic statement and more a failure of narrative architecture. While Lockwood warns readers of a "Protagonist Problem," Dieck contends that the author's self-awareness arrives too late to save a story that actively resists comprehension. This is not a review of a confusing book; it is an examination of what happens when a writer's distrust of language overwhelms the very act of storytelling.
The Architecture of Confusion
Dieck identifies the core flaw immediately: the novel attempts to mirror the protagonist's mental unraveling but ends up mirroring the reader's frustration instead. She notes that Lockwood's prose, usually a strength, becomes a barrier when it refuses to anchor itself in reality. "I struggled, even on my second go at reading it, to make sense of what was going on," Dieck writes, highlighting a disconnection that goes beyond stylistic choice. The argument is compelling because it distinguishes between intentional ambiguity and structural incoherence. When a text lacks a "natural narrative current," Dieck observes, the author is forced to rely on clumsy signposts rather than organic storytelling.
The review points out that Lockwood inserts "fairly unsubtle guideposts" to signal plot movement, such as a sudden pronoun swap or a cryptic epiphany about a nephew. These moments feel less like literary devices and more like emergency flares. Dieck argues that the novel's resolution relies on a "bizarre deus ex machina," where a cryptid creature magically restores the protagonist's mind. This reference to a mechanical plot device—akin to the divine interventions in classical Greek drama—underscores Dieck's point that the story's ending feels contrived rather than earned. The author suggests that the book's opaqueness is mistaken for mystique, a dangerous conflation that leaves the reader wandering without a map.
The pleasure of each funny line or beautifully rendered impression dissipates, rather than builds. Being moved is directional, and Lockwood does not point us to anything.
The Crisis of Language and Form
Dieck digs deeper into the philosophical underpinnings of Lockwood's work, tracing a tension between the desire to free meaning from language and the need for language to create meaning. She references Lockwood's earlier poetry, specifically the poem "What is the Zoo for What," where the poet describes the voice as a "zoo" for sound that wants to escape. Dieck posits that this novel is an experiment in letting that sound run wild, but the result is a loss of control. "Lockwood is too suspicious of the slipperiness of language to integrate her prose in a coherent whole," she argues. This is a sharp observation: the very tools that make Lockwood's poetry unique become liabilities in a long-form narrative that demands cohesion.
The commentary draws a parallel to James Joyce, noting that while Joyce also explored the porousness of the self, he actively shaped those sensations into something tangible for the reader. In contrast, Dieck asserts that Lockwood "elides the sensibilities of her audience" and declines to interest them. The review suggests that the novel's crisis is not just the protagonist's illness, but a "crisis of faith in the ability of literature itself to make meaning." This reframes the book's failure not as a personal tragedy of the character, but as a professional failure of the author to trust her own medium.
Critics might argue that Dieck is applying the rules of traditional realism to a work that explicitly rejects them, potentially missing the point of an experimental text. However, Dieck anticipates this by noting that Lockwood's previous novel, No One Is Talking About This, successfully integrated unconventional elements with a clear emotional thesis. The difference, she suggests, is that the earlier book had a "phone-slapped-out-of-hand" moment that grounded the abstract in the real, whereas the new novel remains suspended in a haze.
Bottom Line
Greta Dieck's most powerful insight is that Lockwood's resistance to form has tipped into a rejection of the reader, leaving a collection of vivid images that fail to cohere into a meaningful whole. The argument's greatest vulnerability is its reliance on the expectation of narrative resolution, which may be precisely what the author sought to dismantle. Readers should watch for how Lockwood navigates this tension in future work, as the gap between her poetic genius and her novelistic ambition remains dangerously wide.