Aug 16, 2021
cover reveal for her gripping debut novel None of This is Serious. It will be published by Canongate April 2022
Catherine Prasifka’s
Dublin student life is ending for Sophie and her friends. They’ve got everything figured out, and Sophie feels left behind as they all start to go their separate ways. She’s overshadowed by her best friend Grace. She’s been in love with Finn for as long as she’s known him. And she’s about to meet Rory, who's suddenly available to her online. At a party, what was already unstable completely falls apart and Sophie finds herself obsessively scrolling social media, waiting for something (anything) to happen.
None of This Is Serious is about the uncertainty and absurdity of being alive today. It’s about balancing the real world with the online, and the vulnerabilities in yourself, your relationships, your body. At its heart, this is a novel about the friendships strong enough to withstand anything.
"I inhaled None of This is Serious. For years, non-fiction has been the main driving force in documenting the way that technology has changed society. I’ve been waiting for a fictional story that reflects the all-consuming influence that the Internet has on my life. None of This is Serious is that story. A compulsively readable, fresh and painfully accurate description of the way we live now. Don't let the title fool you. It is serious. Seriously good."
Louise Nealon author of Snowflake
"NONE OF THIS SERIOUS 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, when nothing good is happening and probably nothing good ever will again; and somehow (somehow!) Prasifka depicts that reality with enough investment and emotional candour that you'll need to see how her characters end up. 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."
Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times