Byte-Sized Confessional

Anyone who turns to reading to get away from their screen might be tempted to give up entirely on contemporary literary fiction. The internet — perhaps the greatest threat to the novel in the attention economy — has also been, recently, its greatest obsession. Patricia Lockwood’s No One Is Talking about This replicates in its lyrical fragments the semi-conscious haze of scrolling through a social media feed. If you’re in the market for something harsher, there is Lauren Oyler’s caustic satire of online narcissism, Fake Accounts. And now we have a Canadian addition to the plugged-in canon: Monica Heisey’s debut novel.

Really Good, Actually is the first-person account of Maggie, a twenty-nine-year-old who is dealing with her recent divorce. Or, rather, not dealing with it: Maggie is what we’d label a “hot mess,” prone to self-destructive behaviour and social...