Overview

• Lockwood’s new novel fictionalizes her 2020 COVID infection and prolonged cognitive symptoms, using a shifting first‑ and third‑person voice to mirror altered selfhood.
• Reviewers highlight an associative, fragmentary style that blurs memoir and fiction, with passages of striking prose alongside stretches some find overworked or opaque.
• Several critics praise the book’s rare inside view of long COVID, while others question its self‑referential tone and argue it may resonate most with readers already steeped in Lockwood’s work.
• The narrative draws on biographical touchstones familiar from Priestdaddy and No One Is Talking About This, including her priest father, her late niece, and her husband’s illness, without disclosing key plot turns.
• Lockwood is promoting the release with new interviews and a Talking Volumes appearance in St. Paul on Sept. 25, as reviewers situate the book within a broader turn toward body‑focused, experimental literature.