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Nothing to See
It’s 1994. Peggy and Greta are learning how to live sober. They go to meetings and they ring their support person, Diane. They have just enough money for one Tom Yum between them, but mostly they eat carrot sandwiches. They volunteer at the Salvation Army shop, and sometimes they sleep with men for money. They live with Heidi and Dell, who are also like them.
It’s 2006. Peggy and Greta have two jobs: a job at a call centre, and a job as a moderator for a website. They’re teaching themselves how to code. Heidi and Dell don’t live together anymore, and Dell keeps getting into trouble. One day, Peggy and Greta turn around and there’s only one of them.
It’s 2018. Margaret lives next door to Heidi and her family. She has a job writing code that analyses data for a political organisation, and she’s good at it. Every day she checks an obsolete cellphone she found under her bed, waiting for messages. She struggles to stay sober. Then, one day, there are two of them again, both trying to figure out where they have come from.
Nothing to See is a compelling, brilliantly original novel about life in the era of surveillance capitalism, when society prefers not to see those who are different, and the line between reality and simulation feels dissolvingly thin.
It’s 2006. Peggy and Greta have two jobs: a job at a call centre, and a job as a moderator for a website. They’re teaching themselves how to code. Heidi and Dell don’t live together anymore, and Dell keeps getting into trouble. One day, Peggy and Greta turn around and there’s only one of them.
It’s 2018. Margaret lives next door to Heidi and her family. She has a job writing code that analyses data for a political organisation, and she’s good at it. Every day she checks an obsolete cellphone she found under her bed, waiting for messages. She struggles to stay sober. Then, one day, there are two of them again, both trying to figure out where they have come from.
Nothing to See is a compelling, brilliantly original novel about life in the era of surveillance capitalism, when society prefers not to see those who are different, and the line between reality and simulation feels dissolvingly thin.
383 pages, Paperback
First published June 11, 2020
28 people are currently reading
922 people want to read
About the author
Pip Adam
8 books91 followersPIP ADAM gained an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from Victoria University in 2007. Her work has appeared in Sport, Glottis, Turbine, Lumiere Reader, Hue & Cry, Landfall and Blackmail Press. Her work has also appeared in publications produced in conjunction with two exhibitions at the Wellington City Art Gallery and her reviews have appeared in Metro. She is currently working toward her PhD Creative Writing at Victoria University. Her PhD project explores how engineers describe the built environment. She is using this research to write stories about our relationships with built forms and the structures that hold them up.
Everything We Hoped For won the NZ Post Best First Book Award in 2011 and is an unusually strong first book, distinguished by an exquisitely crafted surface and barely contained emotional force.
Her writing has been described as:
‘a kind of post-post modern fiction - nothing meta, no irony, no narrative arc, no insights or character transformations - the stories are flatline and searing and real’
- Helen Lehndorf PALMERSTON NORTH LIBRARY.
‘Adam knows how to brew a story to its essence and to infuse an emotional undercurrent that is deeply affecting’
- Paula Green CANVAS, NZ HERALD
Everything We Hoped For won the NZ Post Best First Book Award in 2011 and is an unusually strong first book, distinguished by an exquisitely crafted surface and barely contained emotional force.
Her writing has been described as:
‘a kind of post-post modern fiction - nothing meta, no irony, no narrative arc, no insights or character transformations - the stories are flatline and searing and real’
- Helen Lehndorf PALMERSTON NORTH LIBRARY.
‘Adam knows how to brew a story to its essence and to infuse an emotional undercurrent that is deeply affecting’
- Paula Green CANVAS, NZ HERALD
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 90 reviews
September 19, 2020
Well that was entirely a mind-fuck and completely stunning (in all senses of the word).
I found the first segment very, very difficult to get through - it's calmly, bluntly traumatic, and that actually feels weirdly ok for the book: Hannah Newport-Watson put its perfectly in a discussion in the Pantograph Punch: "Are you afraid of heights? Reading Pip Adam’s new novel, Nothing To See, I often pictured myself walking along a high wall: there’s plenty of space and it’s not hard – but you can’t let yourself look down. That’s when you fall." Actually that whole article is worth reading too, here: https://www.pantograph-punch.com/post... - Adam talks about building the reader's consent into the fiction, and that's... exactly what it feels like. Like I had to take it real slow at first (it took me six weeks to read the first 120 pages, and less than a day to read the remaining 264), but it let me come back to it when I needed to, and the whole thing just sunk in over time.
I don't think I understand it all completely yet but I do think it's really quite brilliant.
I found the first segment very, very difficult to get through - it's calmly, bluntly traumatic, and that actually feels weirdly ok for the book: Hannah Newport-Watson put its perfectly in a discussion in the Pantograph Punch: "Are you afraid of heights? Reading Pip Adam’s new novel, Nothing To See, I often pictured myself walking along a high wall: there’s plenty of space and it’s not hard – but you can’t let yourself look down. That’s when you fall." Actually that whole article is worth reading too, here: https://www.pantograph-punch.com/post... - Adam talks about building the reader's consent into the fiction, and that's... exactly what it feels like. Like I had to take it real slow at first (it took me six weeks to read the first 120 pages, and less than a day to read the remaining 264), but it let me come back to it when I needed to, and the whole thing just sunk in over time.
I don't think I understand it all completely yet but I do think it's really quite brilliant.
December 6, 2020
Much could be said about this mindfuck of a book, but I'll never stop thinking about Peggy and Greta making the Alison Holst self-crusting potato quiche (more of a frittata actually lol).
It did take me a while to get into it, but then suddenly I was so invested in wanting these characters to make it, navigating the mine field of everyday situations, never mind the wtf scenario of the book. I think I need to read it again to pick up the clues to what I think was actually going on there.
It did take me a while to get into it, but then suddenly I was so invested in wanting these characters to make it, navigating the mine field of everyday situations, never mind the wtf scenario of the book. I think I need to read it again to pick up the clues to what I think was actually going on there.
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April 13, 2025I don't think this was 'mindfuck' and I don't think it was sci fi and I don't think it was psychological thriller.. what a mis read to say anyof that! a very clever, finely grained imaginative contemporary novel, with real ambiguity, a creeping technological unease. especially fine prose at the points of duality/separation/re-combination/sex scenes.
March 21, 2021
I read the first part of this book in a flurry. Really enjoyed the writing and the subject was fascinating (two women trying to sober up). However, parts two and three lost my interest. I didn't really 'get' the two women becoming one and then two again thread of the story, went over my head.
December 24, 2021
This was one of the smartest books I've read all year. Wrapping my head around the nature of Peggy and Greta's relationship to one another was pretty difficult going at first. I couldn't turn off the theories playing in my head and just enjoy the book, I kept wanting to know. Once the mystery is revealed, I had a much easier time relaxing into the narrative. The pace of this book isn't quick, but it's the day-to-day life spent with these idiosyncratic characters that makes everything work. At one point, a change was occurring for these characters, and the way it is presented allows the reader to catch on before Peggy and Greta. There is a shift in the point of view, and then an absolutely mundane exchange, before they realise what has happened. This extra space on the page allowed my brain to process what I'd seen with the POV change, and what it might mean, before it was revealed. Pip is a genius, and there are so many places in this book where that is just so quietly obvious. So quietly, I don't even know that she would admit it to herself. I love Pip's writing, but this is the first of her novels I've read, so I can't yet compare them or say if there's one I love most. But reading this book, her longest work, definitely made me want to read the rest.
August 11, 2020
Pip Adam just gets better and better. I think this is my favourite of her books so far. This is a compelling and pacey read set over 3 different time periods in 3 different cities in NZ. The relationship of the two characters is part of a mystery you start to unwind as you read - and there's a fantastic twist that happens in the book. There's many social concerns that Pip has written about in her earlier work -- work is her big theme - what we do for work, how we pay the bills. Addiction and capital surveillance are also big themes in this one.
August 14, 2020
Peggy and Greta struggle and support each other in building a life of sobriety and independence after years of constant abuse and addiction. They were one person, but after hitting rock bottom, they are now two halves of the same whole.
The government does not recognize them as separate entities, so they must eke out a meagre living by splitting the little they have two ways. Slowly, they learn how to navigate through society, playing the game as best they can - until the rules change again without warning.
Adam's prose is deceptively bare and concise in the first section, growing more oblique and complex as her character develops and adapts to her situation and surroundings.
Divided into three parts covering from 1994 to 2018, Adams shows the rise of technology and its seamless integration into life from the coder's back-end. She draws parallels between AI's algorithmic patterns and the rote and repetitive social behaviours and communications that maintain the tenuous 'status quo'.
Adams places a human heart into the ghost in the machine with this compelling and affecting tale of a woman at the mercy of techno-political social manipulation and experimentation. Highly recommended.
The government does not recognize them as separate entities, so they must eke out a meagre living by splitting the little they have two ways. Slowly, they learn how to navigate through society, playing the game as best they can - until the rules change again without warning.
Adam's prose is deceptively bare and concise in the first section, growing more oblique and complex as her character develops and adapts to her situation and surroundings.
Divided into three parts covering from 1994 to 2018, Adams shows the rise of technology and its seamless integration into life from the coder's back-end. She draws parallels between AI's algorithmic patterns and the rote and repetitive social behaviours and communications that maintain the tenuous 'status quo'.
Adams places a human heart into the ghost in the machine with this compelling and affecting tale of a woman at the mercy of techno-political social manipulation and experimentation. Highly recommended.
July 24, 2020
Adam tells me exactly what happened, often in minute detail, but I still don't fully understand - and that seems to me her style, her signature: brilliant, imaginative, unsettling ideas examined at micro level in sentences much shorter than this one. The first section is hardest to read because the characters are poor, and the last section flies by because the characters are financially comfortable, which says plenty about my and probably many other readers' ability to actually see the poverty all around us. And we're all part of the same machine in the end, Adam seems to say, and our actions could mean everything or nothing, so what should we do?
Like THE NEW ANIMALS, I'm left dazzled and confused and alive with the possibilities of fiction. A remarkable book. With many bonus references to RollerCoaster Tycoon, a great game of my teen years.
Like THE NEW ANIMALS, I'm left dazzled and confused and alive with the possibilities of fiction. A remarkable book. With many bonus references to RollerCoaster Tycoon, a great game of my teen years.
January 5, 2021
This is one of my favourite novels of 2020. I liked the combination of the slightly surreal mixed in with realistic life. I read it in 3 days.
October 1, 2020
The trouble with reading an exceptional book like Philip Salom's new novel The Fifth Season is that one can't help but expect whatever comes next to be a disappointment. But not so... Pip Adam's new novel Nothing to See is exceptional too...
In a pleasing way, it takes a while to work out what's going on. There are three parts to the novel: 1994 when Peggy and Greta aged 24 are learning to be sober; 2006 when they have jobs; and 2018 when Margaret is working in a specialised field and struggling with both obsession and depression. It sounds banal, but here's the thing: Peggy and Greta used to be one person. Before coming out of rehab and attending sobriety meetings three times a day for something to do so that they don't drink, they came round from a catastrophic blackout to find themselves duplicated. Not cloned, more like twins with separate identities, but so perfectly identical in appearance and mannerisms that people recognise them for what they are, and despise them. Because they are not alone, the same phenomenon has occurred to other young women who've drunk to sordid excess, including their flatmates Heidi and Dell.
Such terrible things happened to them when they were drunk, stealing from their friends, sleeping with men for money and getting gang raped — they don't ever want to go back to that so they do everything together to support one another. Unlike Heidi and Dell who are always at odds, Peggy and Greta are in harmony. But that is their only advantage: everything is so hard for them, it's enough to make you weep. They have some kind of sickness benefit, but it's not enough because the bureaucracy doesn't recognise them as two people. They have only one birth certificate. They can't get a driver's licence, or a passport, or get tertiary entrance or qualifications. That kind of future is slammed shut, but for now the immediate priority is to survive.
It's not hard to see that this is the plight afflicting all kinds of undocumented people in modern society. (When I was moving my father from aged care in Qld to be near me in Melbourne, I had to do it through Centrelink even though he was a self-funded retiree. He could not meet Centrelink's identity requirements because he didn't have a current document with a photo on it. He hadn't had a driver's licence or a passport for decades. This meant that all his paperwork got jammed in the system and went nowhere, and they couldn't answer questions about it because he didn't have a Centrelink number to locate him in the system. To say it was a nightmare is an understatement of how distressing this was. How people with limited English, limited money for phone calls and limited access to a bricks-and-mortar Centrelink office get on, I can't imagine.)
Peggy and Greta have to think very carefully about buying food — and they are so ignorant about cooking, they don't even know the most basic things like how to store potatoes or that food can overcook if you delay taking it out of the oven for some reason. They have a cookbook, Alison Holst's Meals without Meat, and they use it to make a quiche for a picnic organised by their sobriety support group. They are baffled by the crust, they don't know what a flan tin is, and they don't know if they have enough money to buy the ingredients. They decide to take the cookbook to the supermarket with them so that they don't buy more than they need:
Clothes are another problem. They have incinerated their thermals. They only had one pair so they needed them to dry quickly and had put them too close to the heater. (They're clueless about how often clothes should be washed as well.)
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/10/01/n...
In a pleasing way, it takes a while to work out what's going on. There are three parts to the novel: 1994 when Peggy and Greta aged 24 are learning to be sober; 2006 when they have jobs; and 2018 when Margaret is working in a specialised field and struggling with both obsession and depression. It sounds banal, but here's the thing: Peggy and Greta used to be one person. Before coming out of rehab and attending sobriety meetings three times a day for something to do so that they don't drink, they came round from a catastrophic blackout to find themselves duplicated. Not cloned, more like twins with separate identities, but so perfectly identical in appearance and mannerisms that people recognise them for what they are, and despise them. Because they are not alone, the same phenomenon has occurred to other young women who've drunk to sordid excess, including their flatmates Heidi and Dell.
Such terrible things happened to them when they were drunk, stealing from their friends, sleeping with men for money and getting gang raped — they don't ever want to go back to that so they do everything together to support one another. Unlike Heidi and Dell who are always at odds, Peggy and Greta are in harmony. But that is their only advantage: everything is so hard for them, it's enough to make you weep. They have some kind of sickness benefit, but it's not enough because the bureaucracy doesn't recognise them as two people. They have only one birth certificate. They can't get a driver's licence, or a passport, or get tertiary entrance or qualifications. That kind of future is slammed shut, but for now the immediate priority is to survive.
It's not hard to see that this is the plight afflicting all kinds of undocumented people in modern society. (When I was moving my father from aged care in Qld to be near me in Melbourne, I had to do it through Centrelink even though he was a self-funded retiree. He could not meet Centrelink's identity requirements because he didn't have a current document with a photo on it. He hadn't had a driver's licence or a passport for decades. This meant that all his paperwork got jammed in the system and went nowhere, and they couldn't answer questions about it because he didn't have a Centrelink number to locate him in the system. To say it was a nightmare is an understatement of how distressing this was. How people with limited English, limited money for phone calls and limited access to a bricks-and-mortar Centrelink office get on, I can't imagine.)
Peggy and Greta have to think very carefully about buying food — and they are so ignorant about cooking, they don't even know the most basic things like how to store potatoes or that food can overcook if you delay taking it out of the oven for some reason. They have a cookbook, Alison Holst's Meals without Meat, and they use it to make a quiche for a picnic organised by their sobriety support group. They are baffled by the crust, they don't know what a flan tin is, and they don't know if they have enough money to buy the ingredients. They decide to take the cookbook to the supermarket with them so that they don't buy more than they need:
They all turned out their pockets and wallets. Between them they had about eight dollars and there was seven in the jar for flat expenses, like toilet paper. They convinced themselves it would be enough, but they had no idea.
'If we get there and it's not enough we'll just get what we can — the things that'll keep — and then get more tomorrow. ' No one wanted to ask how they would have more money tomorrow, because the quiche was the most exciting thing that had happened in ages. (p.79)
Clothes are another problem. They have incinerated their thermals. They only had one pair so they needed them to dry quickly and had put them too close to the heater. (They're clueless about how often clothes should be washed as well.)
To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2020/10/01/n...
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November 23, 2025i'm sorry to pip for all the bad things i said about the new animals. i thought this was a near perfect novel. the prose is extremely tight as well as sticky. i read the last 200+ pages in a day.
July 19, 2021
Very occasionally you read a book and you're like, I didn't even know books could be like this?? I didn't know this was something a writer could do?
I don't want to talk too much about the plot specifics as I think it is best to read this book without knowing anything about it. At the start I kept thinking "oh I know what's going on ... wait, what?" and it was such a trip. Basically, read it, because it's a masterpiece.
I don't want to talk too much about the plot specifics as I think it is best to read this book without knowing anything about it. At the start I kept thinking "oh I know what's going on ... wait, what?" and it was such a trip. Basically, read it, because it's a masterpiece.
February 4, 2024
Original and interesting. The split personae were well done and the “mechanical turk” labour behind social media well researched. I also understand why this book had to be slow, frustrating and always turning on the spot, but I think the book could have done more than just paint a dark picture.
June 10, 2024
I really enjoyed this. Once I gave up on creating all of my own theories about what was going on I enjoyed it more.
January 26, 2023
Need a book club so I can understand this plot.
But it is four stars cos it’s 2 am and I stayed up reading it. Gripped and enthralled.
At times, the details about the 1994 and 2006 passages took me out of the fantasy. I’m talking contour makeup in 1994 when my memory and google tells me this wasn’t really done at the time. But that aside it felt like a thriller from about half way through and unexpectedly I loved it.
But it is four stars cos it’s 2 am and I stayed up reading it. Gripped and enthralled.
At times, the details about the 1994 and 2006 passages took me out of the fantasy. I’m talking contour makeup in 1994 when my memory and google tells me this wasn’t really done at the time. But that aside it felt like a thriller from about half way through and unexpectedly I loved it.
December 7, 2020
I really enjoyed Nothing to See and found its main character(s) Peggy and Greta (M.) very relatable.
Their story reminded me of other favorites, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, or Virginia Woolfe's Mrs. Dalloway.
All these books feature people whose experience of trauma has led them to live in a liminal state with a fractured sense of time, space, memory, and self. People who, by virtue of existing at all, and affected by circumstances outside their control, fundamentally challenge the norms of the society in which they live.
These people must continually navigate the discomfort they create in others while trying to find their way in the world, and also try to understand and accept themselves in a way that makes sense to them—no easy task.
All this sounds very serious, but Nothing to See is easy to read and filled with wonderfully dark humor and vicarious embarrassment.
Pip Adams writes with beautiful direct sentences and observation. I have lived in the same cities as Peggy and Greta, and like them came of age in the 90's and early 2000's so I found this aspect of the novel provided an extra sense of connection for me.
Their story reminded me of other favorites, including Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse 5, or Virginia Woolfe's Mrs. Dalloway.
All these books feature people whose experience of trauma has led them to live in a liminal state with a fractured sense of time, space, memory, and self. People who, by virtue of existing at all, and affected by circumstances outside their control, fundamentally challenge the norms of the society in which they live.
These people must continually navigate the discomfort they create in others while trying to find their way in the world, and also try to understand and accept themselves in a way that makes sense to them—no easy task.
All this sounds very serious, but Nothing to See is easy to read and filled with wonderfully dark humor and vicarious embarrassment.
Pip Adams writes with beautiful direct sentences and observation. I have lived in the same cities as Peggy and Greta, and like them came of age in the 90's and early 2000's so I found this aspect of the novel provided an extra sense of connection for me.
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July 30, 2022“If the shop wasn’t busy, or the speaker at the meeting wasn’t interesting, they would look off into the distance and imagine shrinking and shrinking and suddenly just not being there anymore. Not being anywhere. Just being gone, but not in any big way that would make people angry, just in a way that made people feel like they had misplaced them”.
May 17, 2021
I was a bit disappointed, but perhaps my expectations were too high. There were some interesting plot twists, but it's all been done before in some shape or form, so I wasn't too surprised. A bit too much description of the mundane.
September 13, 2020
Incredibly powerful book. Unexpected. Try not to read the blurb. Hypnotic style - you just have to give yourself over to it. This is a book that'll still be read next century.
December 27, 2020
Oh my god!!! So great - totally strange but also very real. Book groupies - can someone else read this before our next meeting? Please! - You’ll love it and I need to discuss!
July 10, 2024
really really enjoyed this even though I'm insanely confused and still not totally sure what happened at the end and what the explanation for everything was (pls help)
September 11, 2022
At first this feels like a book about stigmatised identity. About how to build a life after making mistakes, about whether to fight or to surrender in the face of what the world expects of you. Theres trauma but it’s gentle and funny. Then at some point in the final third I became a sobbing mess. Everything got very cold and dark and then messy, erratic in the contemporary section. Uncannily captures the feeling of each period. At moments I found it heavy-handed and some things I didn’t understand but this … just wow. Plus some excellent technology horror - actual chills!
Oh yeah and this is also absolutely a story about labour/ freelancers/the gig economy/ever-increasing demands and moving goalposts in a way that I’ve been trying and failing to find in books like Temporary and There’s no such thing as an easy job. So well done.
There’s also a looot of really lush food talk like in Milk Fed. And it’s an internet novel in the second half. Sex scenes are rare but vivid and queer. Something for everyone!
Oh yeah and this is also absolutely a story about labour/ freelancers/the gig economy/ever-increasing demands and moving goalposts in a way that I’ve been trying and failing to find in books like Temporary and There’s no such thing as an easy job. So well done.
There’s also a looot of really lush food talk like in Milk Fed. And it’s an internet novel in the second half. Sex scenes are rare but vivid and queer. Something for everyone!
April 8, 2021
I went into Nothing to See without expecting it to be a book of speculative fiction - a genre I just don’t gel with all that much, so take these very subjective thoughts with a grain of salt. I liked the first section, which details Peggy and Greta getting sober, navigating AA meetings and learning when to wash clothes and how to make quiche. The following sections became increasingly bizarre and sci fi esque, and I completely lost the plot. I was looking for metaphors and connections and just became confused. I could gather (and appreciate) the commentary on capitalism and the impossibility of working full time while keeping up with domestic tasks, but as for the rest - a tamagotchi phone? Separation of self? Mental health? Coding? Vegan cooking? I have no idea.
March 21, 2021
This is a seriously weird and challenging story - but compelling to keep reading. For me it was about survival. A caution - one review I later read said if you didn't like "the New Animals" you won't like this - maybe true. Pip Adam has a deeply direct and confronting style, deceptively easy to read.
August 11, 2021
Really enjoyed it but not fully sure what happened 😅It was about alcoholism but also about living in a simulation, what is reality etc and a bit apocalyptic. But I think I like it better if it was all just metaphor about alcoholism?
December 3, 2025
late to this and worse for it! like everyone says it’s incisively written. a pip adam masterclass on treating your characters with real care, and i do think the genuinely subversive mode here is this empathy, more than the speculative plot. i will reread the new animals ok
November 5, 2024
Very weird but pretty good. First part of the book is unpleasant to read but worth persevering for the rest of it.
March 7, 2024
31.7-6.8.23
Being so in love with cinema, though knowing books to be superior, only when books are at their best. ‘Nothing to See’ is like a good TV show. Something like this, an unravelling narrative made up of character interactions, with some mostly unimportant deliberation. It’s missing the human element of cinema. 1 human writing words for another to imagine, at its basic level (something as simple as people interacting like in ‘Nothing to See’) is missing the extra collaborative humanity of film creation. I am currently reading ‘Nothing to See’ like a screenplay. It needs movie magic, crushing performances from young actors. The details ‘Nothing to See’ provides should be culled to maintain the dialogue.
The ominous presence of the narrative concept/gimmick of this alcoholic-woman-mitosis. This event explained multiple times has an interesting, dark feeling each unnerving time. This is a mood piece. Often it’s cute, innocent learning-to-adult stuff. But it’s melancholic. Totally love that.
The crease on the cover of this VUP 1st TPB makes an interesting distortion along the skin of the cover image’s face. With that crease you don’t need the earring on the left ear.
The cover design is simple but provocative. It provides human connection, intimacy, a kind of exhibitionism—a watcher’s license to read. Two split minimalist design faces on pastel (that trend on literary covers) would’ve been too boring. I like real people. Although it does inform the character image a lot.
“If you’re lucky you’ll keep getting older.”
I suppose it’s meaningful it wasn’t working towards an explanation for why the things that make ‘Nothing’s universe different to ours—or more certainly different, ours has enough mystery that some of us could think parts of ‘Nothing’s speculation possible. But I was hanging on hoping there’s be something wondrous at the end but it’s more of the same. Wholesome, life-acceptance. It’s a disappointing answer to take days as they come and live through the inequity of class, when our wages differ. And then it’s too basic for a 400 page book.
It doesn’t really ask questions about life (aside from “what even is reality?”) despite touching on several serious social issues. I guess it’s more about allowing those things to exist in a fictional setting, so we can witness these people struggle through things we know happen without feeling as bad.
If I edited this book it would’ve been cut in half, and trimmed again and again. Leaving all that hits hardest, and most of the dialogue from the remaining scenes. A lot of the unnecessary scene description would be gone. What’s left would be people coming to terms with their existence, the way of life needed to get by in contemporary society. What’s gone would be unneeded and dramaless action. The psyche and how it comes out in the dialogue is most of what made the book.
Most of the last section would be gone. The most important stuff in that part is when Heidi and Peggy/Greta discuss Dell and the state of affairs next to the volleyball match, and then the ending moments.
Sex scenes were pretty interesting but I forgot about them until you reminded me about them, cheers.
Strings one on too long. I wouldn’t recommend to someone who reads slow or barely reads. I would resignedly recommend to someone it seems the book was made for. The kind of person who would feel seen by it—most student age people with half a heart. I suppose someone who reads thrillers would be into it. This book was not made for people to be mindfucked by the surreal happenings. You’re blowing it out of proportion at that point. Or haven’t discovered your own imagination yet.
7.3.24
Is this something depressed people would prefer over healthy people? It is one of my fantasies to have two of me. That would be a perfect relationship. Yes, we would feed on all the negative things but we wouldn’t slip into laziness all the time. I guess one of the surreal things that would happen is one would feel like they are doing most of the work when they’re watching tv more. But what I’m picturing is double the will to work and work together and then snuggle up to watch a movie after or on a day you both feel like chilling. It’s a common saying “if only there were two of me.” Also you could use it to make money as like so identical it’s weird.
Being so in love with cinema, though knowing books to be superior, only when books are at their best. ‘Nothing to See’ is like a good TV show. Something like this, an unravelling narrative made up of character interactions, with some mostly unimportant deliberation. It’s missing the human element of cinema. 1 human writing words for another to imagine, at its basic level (something as simple as people interacting like in ‘Nothing to See’) is missing the extra collaborative humanity of film creation. I am currently reading ‘Nothing to See’ like a screenplay. It needs movie magic, crushing performances from young actors. The details ‘Nothing to See’ provides should be culled to maintain the dialogue.
The ominous presence of the narrative concept/gimmick of this alcoholic-woman-mitosis. This event explained multiple times has an interesting, dark feeling each unnerving time. This is a mood piece. Often it’s cute, innocent learning-to-adult stuff. But it’s melancholic. Totally love that.
The crease on the cover of this VUP 1st TPB makes an interesting distortion along the skin of the cover image’s face. With that crease you don’t need the earring on the left ear.
The cover design is simple but provocative. It provides human connection, intimacy, a kind of exhibitionism—a watcher’s license to read. Two split minimalist design faces on pastel (that trend on literary covers) would’ve been too boring. I like real people. Although it does inform the character image a lot.
“If you’re lucky you’ll keep getting older.”
I suppose it’s meaningful it wasn’t working towards an explanation for why the things that make ‘Nothing’s universe different to ours—or more certainly different, ours has enough mystery that some of us could think parts of ‘Nothing’s speculation possible. But I was hanging on hoping there’s be something wondrous at the end but it’s more of the same. Wholesome, life-acceptance. It’s a disappointing answer to take days as they come and live through the inequity of class, when our wages differ. And then it’s too basic for a 400 page book.
It doesn’t really ask questions about life (aside from “what even is reality?”) despite touching on several serious social issues. I guess it’s more about allowing those things to exist in a fictional setting, so we can witness these people struggle through things we know happen without feeling as bad.
If I edited this book it would’ve been cut in half, and trimmed again and again. Leaving all that hits hardest, and most of the dialogue from the remaining scenes. A lot of the unnecessary scene description would be gone. What’s left would be people coming to terms with their existence, the way of life needed to get by in contemporary society. What’s gone would be unneeded and dramaless action. The psyche and how it comes out in the dialogue is most of what made the book.
Most of the last section would be gone. The most important stuff in that part is when Heidi and Peggy/Greta discuss Dell and the state of affairs next to the volleyball match, and then the ending moments.
Sex scenes were pretty interesting but I forgot about them until you reminded me about them, cheers.
Strings one on too long. I wouldn’t recommend to someone who reads slow or barely reads. I would resignedly recommend to someone it seems the book was made for. The kind of person who would feel seen by it—most student age people with half a heart. I suppose someone who reads thrillers would be into it. This book was not made for people to be mindfucked by the surreal happenings. You’re blowing it out of proportion at that point. Or haven’t discovered your own imagination yet.
7.3.24
Is this something depressed people would prefer over healthy people? It is one of my fantasies to have two of me. That would be a perfect relationship. Yes, we would feed on all the negative things but we wouldn’t slip into laziness all the time. I guess one of the surreal things that would happen is one would feel like they are doing most of the work when they’re watching tv more. But what I’m picturing is double the will to work and work together and then snuggle up to watch a movie after or on a day you both feel like chilling. It’s a common saying “if only there were two of me.” Also you could use it to make money as like so identical it’s weird.
July 13, 2020
It’s not often that a book lingers after the last page is turned. This one positively refuses to go away. So many layers to revisit, to pick over and find more or different meanings. I especially loved the insanity of early recovery, noodles, quiche and all, the sly personal digs and tricky clues that I spotted but could not decipher until the end. Great read!
February 13, 2021
Absolutely worth the read. Unsettling and unnerving.
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