Very Online, With an Abundance of Menace: On Meghan Lamb’s “Coward”

"Coward" cover

Given the amount of time that we spend in online spaces, it’s not surprising that many writers have sought to replicate the experience of social networks, text messaging, and shitposting in their prose. Finding a way to do it without stumbling along the way is a little more of a challenge. (There’s an early-2000s novel by one of my favorite writers where the evocation of texting felt so dissonant it took me out of the narrative.) And while many of us have been online for years or decades, it feels like it’s taken literature a little bit of time to catch up.

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