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mhairimc's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
cliobemuzedbookworm's review against another edition
3.0
Ducks, Newburyport ... what to say? How to rate?
Did I go into this book with quite some tripdation? Definitely. A 1000 page book written in stream-of-consciousness about the inner thoughts of a Ohio housewife... doesn't really sound super appealing.
However, I cannot say that I was bored with this book.
Did it drag on for too long? Definitely,it could've definitely slimmed down a bit, however, a lot of its length is also needed and merited.
I'll settle on 3.5. I respect it a lot and think it merits a 4, but personally I didn't fully connect with it and it could've definitely taken some 200 pages off its length without compromising anything of the story.
The story is narrated in an interesting way and it kind of takes some time to get into the swing of things. Our narrator's thought are presented to us in a single stream, though throughout it also becomes clear that we are not following a continuous flow, there are seemless timejumps here and there. Her thoughts seem to spiral out of control at times, resulting in long lists and associative thoughts. But as the book progresses you also see her thoughts spiral bakc and start to uncover things at the very core of her psyche.
And while in the swing of things, it was actually quite a relaxing read, and very relatable at times. Our narrator is mainly thinking about the state of the world, about such issues as climate change, gun control, Trump. All while baking pies, watching movies and fretting about her relationship with her children.
This narration is interwoven at times with short passages from the perspective of a mountain lion, a story that interweaves in a lovely way throughout as the lion becomes part of the main narrative more and more.
I didn't have a bad time with this book, but without the audiobook I don't know whether I would've gotten through because the text lacks structuring and so you need to really animate the text yourself in order to not get caught in a repetitive pattern that'll send you to sleep. I really had problems with that and while reading physically would often feel my mind slip away. this still happened in the audio, but I also feel like it is ok for the mind to wander a bit in this book.
Another positive about this book is that it got me interested in watching movies again. This book is definitely responsible for watching 4 mvies mentioned in these pages over the past weekend.
Conclusion: an enjoyable experience, but probably not something worth the 1000 page read and the level of concentration needed. At least not for me. But I can also understand why so many people did absolutely vibe with this book.
Did I go into this book with quite some tripdation? Definitely. A 1000 page book written in stream-of-consciousness about the inner thoughts of a Ohio housewife... doesn't really sound super appealing.
However, I cannot say that I was bored with this book.
Did it drag on for too long? Definitely,it could've definitely slimmed down a bit, however, a lot of its length is also needed and merited.
I'll settle on 3.5. I respect it a lot and think it merits a 4, but personally I didn't fully connect with it and it could've definitely taken some 200 pages off its length without compromising anything of the story.
The story is narrated in an interesting way and it kind of takes some time to get into the swing of things. Our narrator's thought are presented to us in a single stream, though throughout it also becomes clear that we are not following a continuous flow, there are seemless timejumps here and there. Her thoughts seem to spiral out of control at times, resulting in long lists and associative thoughts. But as the book progresses you also see her thoughts spiral bakc and start to uncover things at the very core of her psyche.
And while in the swing of things, it was actually quite a relaxing read, and very relatable at times. Our narrator is mainly thinking about the state of the world, about such issues as climate change, gun control, Trump. All while baking pies, watching movies and fretting about her relationship with her children.
This narration is interwoven at times with short passages from the perspective of a mountain lion, a story that interweaves in a lovely way throughout as the lion becomes part of the main narrative more and more.
I didn't have a bad time with this book, but without the audiobook I don't know whether I would've gotten through because the text lacks structuring and so you need to really animate the text yourself in order to not get caught in a repetitive pattern that'll send you to sleep. I really had problems with that and while reading physically would often feel my mind slip away. this still happened in the audio, but I also feel like it is ok for the mind to wander a bit in this book.
Another positive about this book is that it got me interested in watching movies again. This book is definitely responsible for watching 4 mvies mentioned in these pages over the past weekend.
Conclusion: an enjoyable experience, but probably not something worth the 1000 page read and the level of concentration needed. At least not for me. But I can also understand why so many people did absolutely vibe with this book.
deea_bks's review against another edition
5.0
4.5*
If you were to present the world of today (more specifically than that, America of today) to a person who has no idea about it, how would you do it?
Lucy Ellmann would say that you would definitely mention the Trumps and other ex presidents, environmental issues, the endangerment of animal species, some historical facts, you would repeat some things more than twice or three times as, remember, you are not talking to a connoisseur, you would mention guns and probably mass killings and you would intersperse media headlines between your trains of thoughts as, aren’t they interrupting us and influencing us all the time no matter what we do or wherever we look?
If you were also trying to convey the spirit of the present and not only a fairly objective idea of what an American is dealing with daily, how would you do it? How would you best convey the ever-present anxiety and today’s cacophony of information overload that would be able to make the person you are presenting this to understand the realities you are talking about as if he/she were experiencing them first-hand?
Well, Lucy Ellmann would say that you would present things in such a way so as to seem unfiltered by any norms or moral filters, exactly as they are running incessantly through your head, in a stream of consciousness that seems to go nowhere and everywhere at the same time. And since you are a human being and all human beings have mundane worries to deal with all the time and also traumas, you would also add them to the concoction.
You would mix everything in a hotchpotch of facts and ideas brought up by using “the fact that” and either continued or abandoned whenever the next “the fact that” is used again and then brought up again and again and… again by the same “the fact that” in other forms or contexts. This seems tiring like hell, I know, and at the beginning I was put off a bit by this (and by the length of this book!!!) as well and I became quite impatient with reading “the fact that” like thirty times per page or so. I got used to it rather fast though or simply began to ignore the damned “the fact that” as we often stop paying attention to anything that is “so present” and managed to really enjoy the book. And from that point on, it didn’t seem long at all anymore.
I will for sure miss “hearing” the main character’s voice talking on and on and on about what’s wrong with the world today (issues that are frequently running through my head as well) and seeing how she randomly connects one fact with another or one headline with one of her worries in a really amusing way. I’ll also miss “hearing” about Babar (I thought no one else had ever seen this cartoon but me, so thank you Lucy Ellman for having proved me wrong!), about how she thinks “12 Angry Men” is rather corny but she still likes it in spite of that, about how she thinks that her best friend is actually a Prepper and tries to understand the concept and about how she calls her behind “my sit-me-down upon” over and over and over again.
This is not really written like a novel (it is a 1022 pages long stream of consciousness with only one full stop (at the end), disregarding the short fragments about the lioness), but it is fresh, the ideas are interesting and it reads like an enormous (jigsaw?!) puzzle - the main character is a bit obsessed with jigsaw puzzles. The ending failed a bit to convince me as I found it a bit too sentimental (this is why the 4.5* and not 5*), but this was quite a good read alright.
If you were to present the world of today (more specifically than that, America of today) to a person who has no idea about it, how would you do it?
Lucy Ellmann would say that you would definitely mention the Trumps and other ex presidents, environmental issues, the endangerment of animal species, some historical facts, you would repeat some things more than twice or three times as, remember, you are not talking to a connoisseur, you would mention guns and probably mass killings and you would intersperse media headlines between your trains of thoughts as, aren’t they interrupting us and influencing us all the time no matter what we do or wherever we look?
If you were also trying to convey the spirit of the present and not only a fairly objective idea of what an American is dealing with daily, how would you do it? How would you best convey the ever-present anxiety and today’s cacophony of information overload that would be able to make the person you are presenting this to understand the realities you are talking about as if he/she were experiencing them first-hand?
Well, Lucy Ellmann would say that you would present things in such a way so as to seem unfiltered by any norms or moral filters, exactly as they are running incessantly through your head, in a stream of consciousness that seems to go nowhere and everywhere at the same time. And since you are a human being and all human beings have mundane worries to deal with all the time and also traumas, you would also add them to the concoction.
You would mix everything in a hotchpotch of facts and ideas brought up by using “the fact that” and either continued or abandoned whenever the next “the fact that” is used again and then brought up again and again and… again by the same “the fact that” in other forms or contexts. This seems tiring like hell, I know, and at the beginning I was put off a bit by this (and by the length of this book!!!) as well and I became quite impatient with reading “the fact that” like thirty times per page or so. I got used to it rather fast though or simply began to ignore the damned “the fact that” as we often stop paying attention to anything that is “so present” and managed to really enjoy the book. And from that point on, it didn’t seem long at all anymore.
I will for sure miss “hearing” the main character’s voice talking on and on and on about what’s wrong with the world today (issues that are frequently running through my head as well) and seeing how she randomly connects one fact with another or one headline with one of her worries in a really amusing way. I’ll also miss “hearing” about Babar (I thought no one else had ever seen this cartoon but me, so thank you Lucy Ellman for having proved me wrong!), about how she thinks “12 Angry Men” is rather corny but she still likes it in spite of that, about how she thinks that her best friend is actually a Prepper and tries to understand the concept and about how she calls her behind “my sit-me-down upon” over and over and over again.
This is not really written like a novel (it is a 1022 pages long stream of consciousness with only one full stop (at the end), disregarding the short fragments about the lioness), but it is fresh, the ideas are interesting and it reads like an enormous (jigsaw?!) puzzle - the main character is a bit obsessed with jigsaw puzzles. The ending failed a bit to convince me as I found it a bit too sentimental (this is why the 4.5* and not 5*), but this was quite a good read alright.
reads_avec_chats's review against another edition
5.0
Katy Waldman says, in her review in The New Yorker, “Verisimilitude is not the goal here: real people don’t verbalize their emotional weather so relentlessly or spin off into constant rhymes and puns.” Oh yes they do. I get that this book might not be for everyone, but for me, this novel was thrilling, and affirming. I felt that Lucy Ellmann entered my own mind. She created a narrator who shares my pattern of thinking, complete with snatches of song, and rhymes that unwittingly serve as vehicles of transportation from one thought to the next. And the narrator and I have so many overlapping thoughts, at times verbatim, it was uncanny. Though the voice comes across as authentic and natural, Ellmann succeeded in capturing her narrator’s interiority through skill and brilliance. What talent.
At first glance the book may seem intimidating, with no room to breathe, but it has such energy that the prose zooms. It’s also a book that allows you to put it down without having to go back and review when you pick it up again. The character is highly engaging, often funny (I laughed out loud reading about her trip to the dentist) even as she’s heartbroken by personal losses (especially the illness and death of her mother), practically immobilized by shyness, dismayed by Trump, lamenting of current and historical injustices, fearful of gun violence, buried in debt from a bout of cancer, overwhelmed with the responsibilities of rearing children and chickens and her job.
(I disagree with the blurbers and reviewers who label her a “housewife.” The narrator, in addition to being a wife and mother, is a baker who works out of her own kitchen. Were she a computer programmer working from home what would they call her?)
While it isn’t exactly a traditional novel any more than, say, Ulysses or The Waves are traditional novels, there is a plot, and a subplot, and they do weave together. And the narrator is ultimately forced to face her biggest fear.
An exhilarating read.
Thanks for listening.
At first glance the book may seem intimidating, with no room to breathe, but it has such energy that the prose zooms. It’s also a book that allows you to put it down without having to go back and review when you pick it up again. The character is highly engaging, often funny (I laughed out loud reading about her trip to the dentist) even as she’s heartbroken by personal losses (especially the illness and death of her mother), practically immobilized by shyness, dismayed by Trump, lamenting of current and historical injustices, fearful of gun violence, buried in debt from a bout of cancer, overwhelmed with the responsibilities of rearing children and chickens and her job.
(I disagree with the blurbers and reviewers who label her a “housewife.” The narrator, in addition to being a wife and mother, is a baker who works out of her own kitchen. Were she a computer programmer working from home what would they call her?)
While it isn’t exactly a traditional novel any more than, say, Ulysses or The Waves are traditional novels, there is a plot, and a subplot, and they do weave together. And the narrator is ultimately forced to face her biggest fear.
An exhilarating read.
Thanks for listening.
jiscoo's review against another edition
It’s a good book and I enjoy reading it in the moment but I kept finding myself dreading opening it again. I just don’t have the time.
hellosmilagan's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
tommy_salami's review against another edition
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
madscientistcat's review against another edition
Had a hard time following because of the unique writing style so I switched to the audiobook, which is great!
bfsooner's review against another edition
1.0
the fact that i'm giving this book one start is because of the fact that it truly, legitimately is one of the worst books i've ever read and if i ever have to read another book that uses the words "the fact that" or cannot use proper punctuation and commonly accepted grammar practices will be enough for me to give up on reading a book ever again this book might have actually broken me
postalweight's review against another edition
3.0
The fact that woof, that was a long one, the fact that it took a while to read, the fact that all my long books took a while to read, but this one took longer, length, time, months, the fact that it was kind of a momentum killer, the fact that that's ok, the fact that I still liked it, but I didn't love it, the fact that that's ok, that I didn't love it that is, the fact that it started out really interesting, and you kinda get into a flow with the one sentence, the fact that it also takes a while to get into that flow though, the fact that the end really ramped up, the fact that I think it really ended nicely, the fact that I think Rachel White would enjoy this book.