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caitytruss's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
klmnz's review against another edition
I'm not cool enough to pretend I liked this book. Also it's over 1000 pages, I was getting through about 3 pages a day, which would take me nearly a year and that's just not feasible for either my sanity or my library's loan period.
mwx1010's review against another edition
3.0
I’m not sure about this one.
Read after it appeared on the Booker longlist (and then shortlist), this was a little intimidating going in. I’d seen the publicity, read the reviews.
As is probably widely known now, this is at heart a 1,000 page, single sentence internal monologue from a middle-class, middle-aged American woman (it’s not really a single sentence as has been pointed out by far wiser people than me, but to all intents and purposes it reads like one). The main narrative is interspersed every 100 pages or so by the story of a mountain lioness for reasons at first inscrutable but which become clearer by the end of the story.
On one level I struggled with this. Ellman’s writing the novel as a monster run-on sentence with ongoing verbal tics and repetitions is at first annoying (about 50 pages in I was seriously considering DNFing this as I couldn’t face another 19 goes around the same block), but after a while a rhythm emerges in the writing and the flow moves from irritating to an almost fugue-like hypnotic state. That said, there’s a LOT of it here. I’d be lying if I said I always relished picking this book up and there was sometimes an element of putting in a couple of hours at the coal-face to try and move the read-percentage on a little. One complaint about this book is its length, but I think that’s very much part of what Ellmann is trying to do with it - we’re strongly in experimental fiction territory here and I think the sheer monumental indigestibility of the work sends you to a similar place as Warhol’s Sleep or Empire.
The flip side is that the writing is often fantastic (and sometimes very, very funny). Ellmann’s accomplished something clever by managing to spread what is essentially a decent short-story’s worth of plot over an Infinite Jest-esque page count. She’s also captured the way people’s internal thought processes hop about and cross-fertilise better than anything I can remember reading.
So, overall something of a mixed bag. I’m glad I read it but I’m also glad to have it behind me. Not likely to end up on the re-read list.
Also, read the glossary. All is not as it seems.
Read after it appeared on the Booker longlist (and then shortlist), this was a little intimidating going in. I’d seen the publicity, read the reviews.
As is probably widely known now, this is at heart a 1,000 page, single sentence internal monologue from a middle-class, middle-aged American woman (it’s not really a single sentence as has been pointed out by far wiser people than me, but to all intents and purposes it reads like one). The main narrative is interspersed every 100 pages or so by the story of a mountain lioness for reasons at first inscrutable but which become clearer by the end of the story.
On one level I struggled with this. Ellman’s writing the novel as a monster run-on sentence with ongoing verbal tics and repetitions is at first annoying (about 50 pages in I was seriously considering DNFing this as I couldn’t face another 19 goes around the same block), but after a while a rhythm emerges in the writing and the flow moves from irritating to an almost fugue-like hypnotic state. That said, there’s a LOT of it here. I’d be lying if I said I always relished picking this book up and there was sometimes an element of putting in a couple of hours at the coal-face to try and move the read-percentage on a little. One complaint about this book is its length, but I think that’s very much part of what Ellmann is trying to do with it - we’re strongly in experimental fiction territory here and I think the sheer monumental indigestibility of the work sends you to a similar place as Warhol’s Sleep or Empire.
The flip side is that the writing is often fantastic (and sometimes very, very funny). Ellmann’s accomplished something clever by managing to spread what is essentially a decent short-story’s worth of plot over an Infinite Jest-esque page count. She’s also captured the way people’s internal thought processes hop about and cross-fertilise better than anything I can remember reading.
So, overall something of a mixed bag. I’m glad I read it but I’m also glad to have it behind me. Not likely to end up on the re-read list.
Also, read the glossary. All is not as it seems.
george_salis's review against another edition
2.0
This book seemed uniquely maximalist, turning each reader into their own antenna that picks out references and allusions from the "torrent of meaningless info," as it's described on the back of the book. What with confirmation bias at play, one could almost nurture the illusion that this book was written with them specifically in mind. Such were my first impressions, but after reading more and more I feel that the book suffers from being almost solipsistically monophonic, a single radio transmission that only briefly picks up on the white noise of other stations and engages with them on a more or less superficial level. The brief lioness sections that are lightly peppered throughout do little to add another voice/perspective. Thus, in a way, if you've read the first 100 pages of this book then you've read the first 400, due to the white noise style.
While the structure is unique overall, there are certain tics that recall White Noise, specifically the list of name brands. And the free association/rhyming is the most interesting part of the book and reminded me of the Ulysses' riff: "Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer...” I do agree with another reader who said that the antecedent corrections were annoying, failed attempts at humor at best.
Let it be known that "the fact that" is the new grand champion of verbal tics, formerly belonging to "type of thing" in DFW's The Pale King. I found that the mind becomes desensitized to the phrase, retreating into the background of the experience, so it's not as annoying as it could be at face value, but I don’t think it adds anything to the immediate reading experience. Sure, one could say that the inundation of so-called facts reflects the sorry state of American culture, lacking as it does respect for critical thinking skills, and thus everything is a ‘fact.’
As readers have been discovering, Ducks is not really a single sentence, even though saying so makes for great marketing doesn’t it, at least for a certain group of people who enjoy ostensibly challenging literature, like me. There are numerous instances on each page where a period could replace a comma. I think the commas are more of a visual phenomenon in this case rather than anything truly grammatical. I read somewhere that the publisher recommends taking breaks too. The "Penelope" episode of Ulysses, on the other hand, is much more of a single sentence and I pleasurably read it in one sitting.
While reading this, there was the feeling that "I could write that." Which is similar to the cliché critique of modern art. But with modern art, it's not about the skill of execution per se, but the feelings evoked by the piece. And I think that's the saving grace of this novel, the feelings it can evoke, not its subpar technicality or lack thereof. I think that’s why other people are really enjoying this novel, but it didn’t really resonate with me on that level either.
I didn’t love this, nor did I hate it, I found the prose style and the quotidian content to be just interesting/amusing enough to warrant an ambitiously mediocre label. It’s a long book, but not difficult, and it would be quite an easy read if you find the narrator’s thoughts particularly stimulating. I think one problem I had is that the narrator’s thoughts felt too obvious or platitudinous to me. After taking a break to read Omensetter’s Luck, I found that I had very little interest in returning to this book and with around 600 pages left, there are too many books I’m yearning to read in order to give this one more of my time. I pushed through all 850 pages of the mediocre-at-best The Runaway Soul by Harold Brodkey, hoping for some revelatory moment, but it never came, so I don’t want to go through something similar with Ducks.
While the structure is unique overall, there are certain tics that recall White Noise, specifically the list of name brands. And the free association/rhyming is the most interesting part of the book and reminded me of the Ulysses' riff: "Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer...” I do agree with another reader who said that the antecedent corrections were annoying, failed attempts at humor at best.
Let it be known that "the fact that" is the new grand champion of verbal tics, formerly belonging to "type of thing" in DFW's The Pale King. I found that the mind becomes desensitized to the phrase, retreating into the background of the experience, so it's not as annoying as it could be at face value, but I don’t think it adds anything to the immediate reading experience. Sure, one could say that the inundation of so-called facts reflects the sorry state of American culture, lacking as it does respect for critical thinking skills, and thus everything is a ‘fact.’
As readers have been discovering, Ducks is not really a single sentence, even though saying so makes for great marketing doesn’t it, at least for a certain group of people who enjoy ostensibly challenging literature, like me. There are numerous instances on each page where a period could replace a comma. I think the commas are more of a visual phenomenon in this case rather than anything truly grammatical. I read somewhere that the publisher recommends taking breaks too. The "Penelope" episode of Ulysses, on the other hand, is much more of a single sentence and I pleasurably read it in one sitting.
While reading this, there was the feeling that "I could write that." Which is similar to the cliché critique of modern art. But with modern art, it's not about the skill of execution per se, but the feelings evoked by the piece. And I think that's the saving grace of this novel, the feelings it can evoke, not its subpar technicality or lack thereof. I think that’s why other people are really enjoying this novel, but it didn’t really resonate with me on that level either.
I didn’t love this, nor did I hate it, I found the prose style and the quotidian content to be just interesting/amusing enough to warrant an ambitiously mediocre label. It’s a long book, but not difficult, and it would be quite an easy read if you find the narrator’s thoughts particularly stimulating. I think one problem I had is that the narrator’s thoughts felt too obvious or platitudinous to me. After taking a break to read Omensetter’s Luck, I found that I had very little interest in returning to this book and with around 600 pages left, there are too many books I’m yearning to read in order to give this one more of my time. I pushed through all 850 pages of the mediocre-at-best The Runaway Soul by Harold Brodkey, hoping for some revelatory moment, but it never came, so I don’t want to go through something similar with Ducks.
tasmanian_bibliophile's review
3.0
‘The fact that …’
… this book was written does not surprise me, the fact that I read it (mostly) does because minimally punctuated stream of consciousness writing is hard on my concentration, regardless of the fact that I can relate to musings about Laura Ingalls Wilder and the fact that the world is stressful, the fact that children and parents need to be worried over as does survival as we march towards destruction, the fact that cherry pies need to be latticed and the fact that it is hard to absorb facts.
Deep breath.
The fact is I found this book amusing, challenging, clever and irritating and the fact is that it is either too long or not long enough.
And no, I am not surprised that it has been nominated for the Booker Prize. The fact is that I won’t be surprised if it wins, or if it doesn’t.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
… this book was written does not surprise me, the fact that I read it (mostly) does because minimally punctuated stream of consciousness writing is hard on my concentration, regardless of the fact that I can relate to musings about Laura Ingalls Wilder and the fact that the world is stressful, the fact that children and parents need to be worried over as does survival as we march towards destruction, the fact that cherry pies need to be latticed and the fact that it is hard to absorb facts.
Deep breath.
The fact is I found this book amusing, challenging, clever and irritating and the fact is that it is either too long or not long enough.
And no, I am not surprised that it has been nominated for the Booker Prize. The fact is that I won’t be surprised if it wins, or if it doesn’t.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
cameronbcook's review against another edition
5.0
This is a startlingly long book with one simple conceit—a run-on sentence from the mind of a woman who works at a small bakery and is raising a family. You’d think the well would run dry, but instead the reader is folded into the narrative through its cyclical musings. Dozens of pages digress into dozens more about Meryl Streep movies, traffic, Laura Ingalls Wilder, episodes of Matlock, recipes for cakes and muffins and cookies, the local flora and fauna of Ohio, different kinds of snow, raising young children, the expectations thrust upon young mothers, etc. It’s frequently funny, sometimes hysterically so, and can read like a long, long set of stand-up comedy. When the emotional weight of the novel finally lands, it hits like a hammer. This book will resonate for many years in my mind.
whosthisrachel's review against another edition
2.0
I very nearly stopped reading this a number times, but was spurred on by all the rave reviews. Wish I had trusted my gut.
Turns out all I got from listening to the ramblings of a (surprisingly knowledgeable) Ohio housewife’s brain was a feeling of overwhelm and increased anxiety.
I KNOW it’s supposed to be an indictment on Americas/ the worlds failures as a species, but in the end I just didn’t care because I was too annoyed with all the lists and needlessly descriptive depictions of murders which I found jarring when she had just been thinking about cinnamon rolls.
Not for me.
Turns out all I got from listening to the ramblings of a (surprisingly knowledgeable) Ohio housewife’s brain was a feeling of overwhelm and increased anxiety.
I KNOW it’s supposed to be an indictment on Americas/ the worlds failures as a species, but in the end I just didn’t care because I was too annoyed with all the lists and needlessly descriptive depictions of murders which I found jarring when she had just been thinking about cinnamon rolls.
Not for me.
merricatct's review against another edition
3.0
Well, I did it! I don’t know how much I enjoyed reading this, but I’m proud that I did. This was certainly one of the more challenging books I’ve read. And I give the author credit for capturing what it’s like to be in a long-term relationship with this book. Not that the book’s plot is about a long-term relationship, no. I mean I literally feel like I was married to this book. Sometimes it drove me crazy with its nonsense; sometimes it delighted me or surprised me; sometimes it bored me; and after long enough, it became a comfortable companion. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that way about a book before. And while I may not have loved this, in a way, I’m going to miss its presence in my life.
grubstlodger's review against another edition
3.0
I picked up Ducks, Newburyport as a book to challenge me and it certainly did that. Most of its thousand pages is a long, unparagraphed stream of consciousnessseperated only by commas and the phrase ‘the fact that’. Occasionally, this is broken up by the story of a lioness having, losing and looking for her cubs told in a standard omniscient perspective with properly formed sentences. What was I to make of this book? Why was it told in such an obtuse and peculiar way?
There was one particular pointer. At the end of the book lie two appendices. The first was a list of acronyms which wasn’t as helpful as I thought it may be, the meanings of the acronyms turned out not to be very important to the text. The second was a selection of quotes. The first quote in that section was part of the ‘cat Jeoffrey’ portion of Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno. I’m a huge fan of this poem and Christopher Smart in general and the inclusion of this in the quotes, and in the book also, pointed me in a certain direction. The poem was written while Smart was incarcerated for an unspecified ‘madness’. It started at as a religious poem, a hymn to all creation which gathered all plants, animals and minerals together with all people, knowledge and experience to praise God. As the poem went on, Smart used it as self-therapy, as a diary, as a way to discuss moral and scientific questions, as a way of remembering his friends and also as a way of counting down his days. It became an encyclopaedic, rambling and dense gathering of everything in Smart’s head and that explains the sheer length of Ducks, Newburyport. The narrator similarly chronicles everything she sees, her worries about the climate, memories of her family, films, books, advertising slogans - the book dramatises exactly how much ‘stuff’ is in her head and while this point could have been made in far fewer words, it couldn’t have been made as resoundingly. Her mind is so full. (There’s also the mirroring of the novel’s ‘the fact that’ phrase matching Smart’s ‘let’, ‘for’ phrases.)
This fullness also explains why this stream of consciousness novel does not read like an actual stream of consciousness. I’ve often seen this in that kind of novel, I had a fever when I read part of Ulysses and even then my mind wasn’t as jumbled and discursive as the book was - and Ducks, Newburyport is even more jumbled than that. For a while I thought maybe I was reading a stream of unconsciousness, the things bubbling under the narrators recognised mind but I noticed she kept correcting her thoughts. For example on page 94 she talks about going to a crematoria to collect the ashes, then birds migrating, then ashes and has to consciously say ‘people, I mean, not birds’. This is often done many times for comic effect but it shows the text is supposed to be her consciousness. Then why does she go on free-associative trails, rhyming and echoing words, often without meaning? Is this supposed to be normal or something strange about her? I think it was yet another way of ramming the idea of her mind crammed with stuff, and much of it useless to her.
To compare the narrator and the lioness, the animal has a simple life with simple motivations whilst the narrator is so crammed with the complications of being a self-conscious animal in a complex world that it interferes with her life and relationships. Which brings us back to the manic stream of consciousness, self-consciousness is the enemy.
This makes the book a tough and at times irritating read but that irritating quality is dictated by the point it is making and which match the manner of it’s telling. Or it would, if it wasn’t for the plot. By the end of the book, Ducks, Newburyport has become a conventional narrative (if not exactly told in a conventional way), there are even heroes and villains, examples of foreshadowing, set-ups and pay-offs. When I got to the end of the book I felt a little cheated, that I’d read a rather average story dressed up in outlandish clothes but I changed my mind when I thought about it a little more.
A book I love that never gives up on its weirdness, or gives in to standard plotting is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Though there are events, it refuses to take the idea of plot seriously at the beginning and still does at the end, laughing at any readers who expected it to wrap in a neat bow (as it could be argued Ducks, Newburyport does). There’s a point where it maps out its ‘plot’ in a series of squiggles. Duck’s Newburyport also has a map, of the lioness looking for her cubs and she goes in a spiral. The book is crammed with spirals as pages circle around events and phrases circle around each other. The plotting of the book also functions as a spiral, being wide and loose at the beginning but getting tighter and tighter. At first there are mentions of real life plot-worthy events happening around the country, then made up plot-worthy events happening in the area of the book, then to other characters in the book and finally to the narrator. The plot of the book spirals closer and closer until the narrator finds herself in a generically plotted book.
So, in terms of structure and style, this is a very clever book but I couldn’t say I found it wholly enjoyable. Although the increments in plot fit the structure, it did leave me feeling dissatisfied by the end - I almost feel the telling of the story should have become more standard as the plot did as I was left with a standard plot told in a weird way. Despite finding some of the narrator’s parts funny and there were some great descriptions (the old people in the mall on page 589 for example), I did not find her great company. She was so dour, so tired of life, so querulous and so reactive, so self-loathing that she made me feel rather exhausted and anxious. I also found ‘the fact that’ was never a phrase that didn’t call attention to itself or sometimes confuse the things she was saying. I found it a book for more fun to think about than to read.
There was one particular pointer. At the end of the book lie two appendices. The first was a list of acronyms which wasn’t as helpful as I thought it may be, the meanings of the acronyms turned out not to be very important to the text. The second was a selection of quotes. The first quote in that section was part of the ‘cat Jeoffrey’ portion of Christopher Smart’s Jubilate Agno. I’m a huge fan of this poem and Christopher Smart in general and the inclusion of this in the quotes, and in the book also, pointed me in a certain direction. The poem was written while Smart was incarcerated for an unspecified ‘madness’. It started at as a religious poem, a hymn to all creation which gathered all plants, animals and minerals together with all people, knowledge and experience to praise God. As the poem went on, Smart used it as self-therapy, as a diary, as a way to discuss moral and scientific questions, as a way of remembering his friends and also as a way of counting down his days. It became an encyclopaedic, rambling and dense gathering of everything in Smart’s head and that explains the sheer length of Ducks, Newburyport. The narrator similarly chronicles everything she sees, her worries about the climate, memories of her family, films, books, advertising slogans - the book dramatises exactly how much ‘stuff’ is in her head and while this point could have been made in far fewer words, it couldn’t have been made as resoundingly. Her mind is so full. (There’s also the mirroring of the novel’s ‘the fact that’ phrase matching Smart’s ‘let’, ‘for’ phrases.)
This fullness also explains why this stream of consciousness novel does not read like an actual stream of consciousness. I’ve often seen this in that kind of novel, I had a fever when I read part of Ulysses and even then my mind wasn’t as jumbled and discursive as the book was - and Ducks, Newburyport is even more jumbled than that. For a while I thought maybe I was reading a stream of unconsciousness, the things bubbling under the narrators recognised mind but I noticed she kept correcting her thoughts. For example on page 94 she talks about going to a crematoria to collect the ashes, then birds migrating, then ashes and has to consciously say ‘people, I mean, not birds’. This is often done many times for comic effect but it shows the text is supposed to be her consciousness. Then why does she go on free-associative trails, rhyming and echoing words, often without meaning? Is this supposed to be normal or something strange about her? I think it was yet another way of ramming the idea of her mind crammed with stuff, and much of it useless to her.
To compare the narrator and the lioness, the animal has a simple life with simple motivations whilst the narrator is so crammed with the complications of being a self-conscious animal in a complex world that it interferes with her life and relationships. Which brings us back to the manic stream of consciousness, self-consciousness is the enemy.
This makes the book a tough and at times irritating read but that irritating quality is dictated by the point it is making and which match the manner of it’s telling. Or it would, if it wasn’t for the plot. By the end of the book, Ducks, Newburyport has become a conventional narrative (if not exactly told in a conventional way), there are even heroes and villains, examples of foreshadowing, set-ups and pay-offs. When I got to the end of the book I felt a little cheated, that I’d read a rather average story dressed up in outlandish clothes but I changed my mind when I thought about it a little more.
A book I love that never gives up on its weirdness, or gives in to standard plotting is The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Though there are events, it refuses to take the idea of plot seriously at the beginning and still does at the end, laughing at any readers who expected it to wrap in a neat bow (as it could be argued Ducks, Newburyport does). There’s a point where it maps out its ‘plot’ in a series of squiggles. Duck’s Newburyport also has a map, of the lioness looking for her cubs and she goes in a spiral. The book is crammed with spirals as pages circle around events and phrases circle around each other. The plotting of the book also functions as a spiral, being wide and loose at the beginning but getting tighter and tighter. At first there are mentions of real life plot-worthy events happening around the country, then made up plot-worthy events happening in the area of the book, then to other characters in the book and finally to the narrator. The plot of the book spirals closer and closer until the narrator finds herself in a generically plotted book.
So, in terms of structure and style, this is a very clever book but I couldn’t say I found it wholly enjoyable. Although the increments in plot fit the structure, it did leave me feeling dissatisfied by the end - I almost feel the telling of the story should have become more standard as the plot did as I was left with a standard plot told in a weird way. Despite finding some of the narrator’s parts funny and there were some great descriptions (the old people in the mall on page 589 for example), I did not find her great company. She was so dour, so tired of life, so querulous and so reactive, so self-loathing that she made me feel rather exhausted and anxious. I also found ‘the fact that’ was never a phrase that didn’t call attention to itself or sometimes confuse the things she was saying. I found it a book for more fun to think about than to read.
sean67's review against another edition
3.0
It took me three attempts, but I made it to the end, finally.
This could be described as some lady banging on for a long time.
I'm not sure what the point of it all was, but I did enjoy parts of it.
I just think it would have worked better with more breaks, have your long sentence, but format it like a poem, which parts of it were rather than a wall of text, which was just too difficult to read.
Anyway an interesting read, which I may revisit one day, probably on e-book, it may be easier to read there.
This could be described as some lady banging on for a long time.
I'm not sure what the point of it all was, but I did enjoy parts of it.
I just think it would have worked better with more breaks, have your long sentence, but format it like a poem, which parts of it were rather than a wall of text, which was just too difficult to read.
Anyway an interesting read, which I may revisit one day, probably on e-book, it may be easier to read there.