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reggikko's review against another edition
5.0
I decided to sit with this for a few days before writing my review. I wanted to put the book in some context based on other books I've read and loved recently. In short, I really love this book. Why then only 4 stars? I am pretty stingy when it comes to handing out 5 stars. Actually, I am on the stingier side when it comes to star ratings in general. To get 5 stars, a book has to be pretty much flawless and I don't think this novel is quite that. Almost, but not quite.
Edit: I’m changing my rating to 5 stars. Now that the book has settled, so to speak, and I find myself still thinking about it, I’ve concluded that whatever tiny flaws there are don’t matter and the book is a towering achievement.
What I loved:
1. I love that Ellmann chooses for her protagonist a woman of indeterminate middle-ish age. The narrator has a 15 year old daughter, so I'd think she is around 40. She's been through a major illness and describes herself as skin and bones thin. She also has debilitating shyness. In other words, by our society's standards, she's basically invisible and a non-entity. She's not young and sexy. She's a harried mother trying to keep herself and her family afloat. I like her ordinariness.
2. In this novel, I feel like Ellmann successfully taps into the anxiety-ridden inner monologue many of us have been living with since November 2016. We're bombarded by horror and tragedy every day. Even in our social spaces (like Facebook) we cannot escape. Last month I took a several week long sabbatical from Facebook, the news, and virtually anything that put more of this stuff into my head. I just needed a break from it all. Still, it's there, like incessant background noise. Ellmann's narrator even asks herself what's up with this monologue? Why is she telling herself all this stuff? The way that the novel is structured accurately illustrates how even when we try to distract ourselves--in the narrator's case with old movies and online jigsaw puzzles--we simply cannot turn it off. It's the neurotic version of Jung's collective unconscious.
3. I love that the book is so female-centric: the narrator, her mother, her aunt, her teenaged daughter, the lioness. It's also about the vulnerability of women, animals, and children. It's about our precarious mortality. It's about the burdens and responsibilities placed on women and about how difficult it is sometimes to be expected to be everything to everyone in your life. The narrator even puts up with an obnoxious man she doesn't like because she feels obligated not to upset him or hurt his feelings. That aspect of the novel is just so damn smart.
4. I have long had a fascination with the portrayal of the everyday in literature. I love the juxtaposition of the quotidian with the wider, unsettling world.
5. Ducks, Newburyport/picnic, lightning. Ellmann had me right there. Nobody loves a good allusion more than I do. Seriously, the book is so damned clever. It's really, really good and I highly recommend it. Will it win the Booker? As of this writing, I'm thinking it probably should.
Edit: I’m changing my rating to 5 stars. Now that the book has settled, so to speak, and I find myself still thinking about it, I’ve concluded that whatever tiny flaws there are don’t matter and the book is a towering achievement.
What I loved:
1. I love that Ellmann chooses for her protagonist a woman of indeterminate middle-ish age. The narrator has a 15 year old daughter, so I'd think she is around 40. She's been through a major illness and describes herself as skin and bones thin. She also has debilitating shyness. In other words, by our society's standards, she's basically invisible and a non-entity. She's not young and sexy. She's a harried mother trying to keep herself and her family afloat. I like her ordinariness.
2. In this novel, I feel like Ellmann successfully taps into the anxiety-ridden inner monologue many of us have been living with since November 2016. We're bombarded by horror and tragedy every day. Even in our social spaces (like Facebook) we cannot escape. Last month I took a several week long sabbatical from Facebook, the news, and virtually anything that put more of this stuff into my head. I just needed a break from it all. Still, it's there, like incessant background noise. Ellmann's narrator even asks herself what's up with this monologue? Why is she telling herself all this stuff? The way that the novel is structured accurately illustrates how even when we try to distract ourselves--in the narrator's case with old movies and online jigsaw puzzles--we simply cannot turn it off. It's the neurotic version of Jung's collective unconscious.
3. I love that the book is so female-centric: the narrator, her mother, her aunt, her teenaged daughter, the lioness. It's also about the vulnerability of women, animals, and children. It's about our precarious mortality. It's about the burdens and responsibilities placed on women and about how difficult it is sometimes to be expected to be everything to everyone in your life. The narrator even puts up with an obnoxious man she doesn't like because she feels obligated not to upset him or hurt his feelings. That aspect of the novel is just so damn smart.
4. I have long had a fascination with the portrayal of the everyday in literature. I love the juxtaposition of the quotidian with the wider, unsettling world.
5. Ducks, Newburyport/picnic, lightning. Ellmann had me right there. Nobody loves a good allusion more than I do. Seriously, the book is so damned clever. It's really, really good and I highly recommend it. Will it win the Booker? As of this writing, I'm thinking it probably should.
sophierayton's review against another edition
3.0
It's taken about a year for me to get through this with lots of stopping and starting. I have a signed hardcover copy of this book from when I met the author at a Booker event, I also borrowed the ebook from the library then bought the ebook on my kindle and finally bought the audiobook to have it done quicker. I've invested so much time, money and energy into this book and having also met the author I really wanted to LOVE IT, but that 'click' moment never came for me. I'm glad it's done but if I could go back I'd tell my younger self to give it a miss and she'd probably say that a thousand pages of internal dialogue doesn't scare her and proceed to read it anyway. Ducks, Newburyport...
erinshinereads's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
tossied's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
llynn66's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- 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
Right out of the gate as I begin this experiment with StoryGraph, I am flinging a five-star rating onto the table. I am generally hesitant to dole out the stars in such a generous manner. However, this book was special for me and I feel like it was one of those bravura books that only come along occasionally. I read this book during what was arguably one of the worst periods in my life and definitely one of the most monotonous. This was a quarantine book for me during the endless summer of 2020 when every day felt like the next and I spent the days in my backyard reading long books. During the time I spent with Ducks, Newburyport, I was able to live inside the life of the nameless protagonist. This was easy to do as the the story was, specifically, the thoughts that randomly flowed through this protagonist's mind.
Many reviewers will have already noted that the structure of this book is 'one long and uninterrupted sentence.' This is both true and untrue. Although the story lacks terminal punctuation of any sort, the story the protagonist tells about her life in contemporary Tuscarawas County, Ohio is interpolated with the story of a mountain lion and her cubs. There is a cadence to the narrative that the reader becomes fluent in riding as one goes deeper into the story. A book constructed in this manner should be monotonous but Ducks, Newburyport is not.
The 'narrator' tells the story of her life as it is in roughly 2016. Donald Trump is president and her mind will occasionally turn to him, as so many of us were pulled into that maelstrom for the past four or five years. This woman experiences the litany of worry about children, money, marriage, employment, societal problems, and health concerns that most mid-lifers live. Yet, the prose is so well constructed that the randomness of thought is realistically replicated. "The mind is like a monkey...flitting from tree to tree", is an axiom I once heard in a yoga class. This woman's mind, in the human fashion, also jumps to random phrases, snippets of song (earworms), movie and book plots, the struggle to remember details, and other ephemera. Meanwhile, there is also the backdrop of memory. The protagonist looks back on her life and recalls those she has loved and lost, relationships which have ended or become strained, and joyful moments she longs to relive.
Through her random memories and internal narrative, a story evolves which includes a cast of characters (her family, friends and associates), a build up of tension (as she processes events which are happening to these people), a climactic crisis, (when a situation builds to a breaking point) and a denouement. The amazing skill demonstrated by Lucy Ellmann in structuring a compelling story of a family who you become invested in despite the lack of conventional style merits an excellent rating. Thus, the five stars.
Also, I must add that I am an Ohio resident and I found it extraordinary that Lucy Ellmann, an American-born author who has not lived in this country since 1970, drew such a finely honed bead on contemporary Midwestern American life. As a middle aged woman, roughly in the same cohort group as the unnamed 'thinker' who tells this story, I was also impressed by the contrast Ellmann drew between the life she lived with her parents as a child and the life she currently leads. So often through the reading, I would lay the book down and tell myself: "I'm not so neurotic. Everyone has these thoughts." -- In a time where it is more challenging to connect with other people and to feel psychologically tethered, that was a small but welcome consolation.
Many reviewers will have already noted that the structure of this book is 'one long and uninterrupted sentence.' This is both true and untrue. Although the story lacks terminal punctuation of any sort, the story the protagonist tells about her life in contemporary Tuscarawas County, Ohio is interpolated with the story of a mountain lion and her cubs. There is a cadence to the narrative that the reader becomes fluent in riding as one goes deeper into the story. A book constructed in this manner should be monotonous but Ducks, Newburyport is not.
The 'narrator' tells the story of her life as it is in roughly 2016. Donald Trump is president and her mind will occasionally turn to him, as so many of us were pulled into that maelstrom for the past four or five years. This woman experiences the litany of worry about children, money, marriage, employment, societal problems, and health concerns that most mid-lifers live. Yet, the prose is so well constructed that the randomness of thought is realistically replicated. "The mind is like a monkey...flitting from tree to tree", is an axiom I once heard in a yoga class. This woman's mind, in the human fashion, also jumps to random phrases, snippets of song (earworms), movie and book plots, the struggle to remember details, and other ephemera. Meanwhile, there is also the backdrop of memory. The protagonist looks back on her life and recalls those she has loved and lost, relationships which have ended or become strained, and joyful moments she longs to relive.
Through her random memories and internal narrative, a story evolves which includes a cast of characters (her family, friends and associates), a build up of tension (as she processes events which are happening to these people), a climactic crisis, (when a situation builds to a breaking point) and a denouement. The amazing skill demonstrated by Lucy Ellmann in structuring a compelling story of a family who you become invested in despite the lack of conventional style merits an excellent rating. Thus, the five stars.
Also, I must add that I am an Ohio resident and I found it extraordinary that Lucy Ellmann, an American-born author who has not lived in this country since 1970, drew such a finely honed bead on contemporary Midwestern American life. As a middle aged woman, roughly in the same cohort group as the unnamed 'thinker' who tells this story, I was also impressed by the contrast Ellmann drew between the life she lived with her parents as a child and the life she currently leads. So often through the reading, I would lay the book down and tell myself: "I'm not so neurotic. Everyone has these thoughts." -- In a time where it is more challenging to connect with other people and to feel psychologically tethered, that was a small but welcome consolation.
minnahelena's review against another edition
challenging
funny
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
paulmackay's review against another edition
5.0
Looking at that one final period after 988 pages was like looking at the face of god.
yleniareads's review against another edition
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.75