Call Patricia Lockwood’s latest a memoir, a novel or anything you want

Chris Hewitt, The Minnesota Star Tribune

Patricia Lockwood’s life and art are so closely linked that it’s appropriate for a cat meowing in the background during a phone interview from her Savannah, Georgia, home to make it into this story.

That cat, Miette, also is in Lockwood’s novel “Will There Ever Be Another You,” in fact. “Will There Ever” is a tricky book, with a narrator who shares biographical details with Lockwood, including a horrifying bout with long COVID, a seriously ill husband, a niece who died in infancy and a father fans will remember from memoir “Priestdaddy” (her novel “ No One Is Talking About This ” also was a bestseller).

That word “memoir” is inadequate for the hilarious, wildly gifted Lockwood’s stream-of-consciousness work, which can seem to be thriller, poetr