Title: None of This is SeriousAuthor: Catherine Prasifka
First Published: April 7, 2022
Publisher: Canongate Books
Pages: 288
Genre: Contemporary, Literary Fiction, Women's Fiction
Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
Rating:
Synopsis:
Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They've got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She's overshadowed by her best friend Grace. She's been in love with Finn for as long as she's known him. And she's about to meet Rory, who's suddenly available to her online.
At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.
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.
Review
None of This is Serious is an ambitious debut that speaks to the whirlwind of experiences of new adults in the modern age. The title itself really captures the nonchalant pessimism that I’ve felt from my fellow millennials and now gen z. Overstimulated by technology and social media, depressed by the struggle to “adult” after college, frustrated by a lack of fair political representation, and the additional dread of climate disaster have created an undercurrent of anxiety that has defined the last two generations of young people. And we cope by memeing it.
Although things can seem bleak, the younger generations are also some of the smartest and most empathetic. Prasifka understands this duality and explores these themes with sincerity. Sophie is cynical and at times an extremely frustrating and flawed narrator, but I was invested in her character. Her mental health is deteriorating and she struggles with persistent feelings of not being good enough, she’s caught between toxic people, boys, friends, and family, and she dives into internet addiction as a distraction. This reliance on technology was sobering and reminded me why I can’t stand most social media.
The book could be a little repetitive at times about certain topics, but it never got boring. Once I passed the halfway point I couldn’t put the book down and stayed up all night to finish the book. Prasifka has potential as an author and I’d love to read more books by her in the future.
Quote
“It’s like we’ve all bought into a collective fiction, where we see it and know something is happening, but because we can’t explain it, it must not be happening. There’s no solution, so we reason there not be a problem either.“
Content Warnings
View Spoiler »About the Author
About Catherine Prasifka
Catherine Prasifka was born in Dublin in 1996. She studied English Literature at Trinity College Dublin and has an MLitt in Fantasy from the University of Glasgow. She has competed in both the European Debating Championships and the World Championships. She is obsessed with learning about how stories work and has ruined nearly all of her favourite books and movies by overanalysing them. She works as a creative writing teacher in Dublin. None of This Is Serious is her first novel.
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