None of This Is Serious: Catherine Prasifka

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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” In the second half of the book I was so livid and heartbroken for Sophie. There is a sexual abuse storyline that really captures the anger of so many discussions I’ve had with my friends.

None of This Is Serious by Catherine Prasifka | Waterstones

None of this is Serious is not always an easy read but I binged it. If you’ve ever been in a toxic relationship, or are a woman who has been on the receiving end of any kind of sexual harassment, or ever used social media to drown out reality, or ever felt alone and confuse about your place in the world, you’ll resonate. We sit on the love seat in the corner of Grace’s sitting room. It’s cold inside, so I pull the blanket on the armrest over me. Without words, Finn grabs it too and gets under it with me. He pulls my legs over his lap. After a minute, Grace opens the door, a drink in her hand. Noise from the party pours out. I don’t recognise the song. Multicoloured balloons roam free-range on the floor. People are dancing in the kitchen beyond the hall, some of them well. It all washes over me.

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Overall, this book made me think a lot about the relationships I have with others in my life. Part of adulthood is realizing that there is no benefit to having relationships in your life that only bring you harm. Learning to love yourself and surrounding yourself with people who care about you is very important. Life is too short to be surrounding yourself with people that will make you feel as though you have no place on this Earth. 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 overanalyzing them. She works as a creative writing teacher in Dublin. None of This Is Serious is her first novel. What, and I mean what, was that about?’ I don’t know what Grace means, but she pours me a glass of water and makes me sit and drink it. To make me feel better, she has one too. ‘Thank God that girl already left. I’ll kill him,’ she says, to herself more than me. We sit together in silence, nursing our water. Grace holds my hand when she notices a tear rolling down my face. ‘Things are going to change now, and change for the better, don’t worry,’ Grace says to me, but I find it hard to believe her. Things are ending, and yet I still feel the same. I’ll always feel this way. God, you look like a drowned rat, come in come in come in, I didn’t even notice this rain starting.’ She pushes me through the door. ‘Need a drink?’ 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.”

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

Edgy . . . [Prasifka] has a painfully raw and acute gift for catching the way things are"— Sunday Times We're delighted to present an extract from None of this is Serious, the debut novel by Catherine Prasifka, published by Canongate. I appreciate I haven’t sold this as the cheeriest read but it is brilliant and so relevant. This is the debut novel from Irish author Catherine Prasifka and aside from the obvious Naoise Dolan and Sally Rooney (who is actually her sister-in-law) comparisons, None of This is Serious also reminded me of other clever, cutting, nuanced and insanely-readable novels by Irish women that cover coming of age, alienation and identity themes. The Fall of the House of Usher reference was a nice way to add more to the general feeling of unease about modern life too. Finn pulls at my sleeve and asks if we can go and chat somewhere. I nod mechanically. My mouth is dry, so I stop along the way to refill my wine glass.My feed is full of photos, so many that they don’t all load at once. One by one, my phone presents me with different areas of the world lit up purple, blurred from how hastily the users took the photos. Most of them are too grainy to make out, but I find a gif someone’s posted of the star shooting across the sky. I watch it on repeat, each time feeling like something inside me is tearing apart. In None of this is Serious we meet Sophie. A 22-year-old University graduate who is job hunting, living at home with her parents in Dublin, feels more at ease in the cyber world than the real one and is more than a little lost. She spends an inordinate amount of time online – she has a true addiction: