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A review by apurvanagpal
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
3.0
3.5⭐️
..the fact that I finally finished reading DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT, enjoyed it, was overwhelmed by it, exhausted, the fact that it was a roaster coaster ride, a monologue running a 1000 pages long, dear god, the fact that it took me a month to read this one, dipping in and out of the mind of a 50-something homebaker in Ohio and her random pool of thoughts all ranging from her personal relationships to gun violence, climate change, old Hollywood movies, Trump, oh my she really hates him, despises him, and I loved her wit for that, the fact that she’s never tired of thinking, while all I can think of right now is how to review this one. Oof!
Ducks, Newburyport is a single sentence, tireless stream-of-conscious narrative, an endless string of literally everything a that goes on inside the head of a homebaker in Ohio. She’s going about her daily chores, mixing the batter for her pies while at the back of her head her thoughts are relaying from her insecurities as a mother to the irresponsible killings of young black men and everything that’s wrong in the world. The idea was to address every possible thing that a wife and a mother consciously or unconsciously worry about; the safety of her children, her critical view of herself as a mother who’s not good enough for her kids or the increasing violence, gun laws and legal permits to keep weapons at home. Her anxiety, being in her 50s and mothering 4 kids, baking and delivering pies to make ends meet with his husband, is pretty evident.
Her thoughts are periodically broken by brief sections of a story of a mountain lioness, who seek to protect and find her cubs, her journey with and to them. These inserts were a pretty clever move by the author to offer a breather from her thoughts and draw a parallel and another aspect of one of her themes ie. Motherhood. I loved how the situation of a lioness on loose comes into her narration, the two plots intersecting very briefly and moving in their own separate ways after serving their purpose.
I did like her approach for the book, written the way it is, the projection of a housewife with a billion bizarre thoughts, both random and anxious, and I don’t think it would’ve done the same had it been written the traditional way. The hypnotic rhythm draws you in and feels like an almost natural buzzing of thoughts, getting in and out of a certain trance or memories triggered one after the other, like her thoughts bouncing from her relationship with her daughter to being a daughter herself and her guilt in both the respective roles. These bits were brilliantly done.
Having said all this, there were parts that did not work for me as a reader. Although the entire book is supposed to be a single running sentence, it doesn’t always read like one. Sections of it felt like a bunch of sentences strung together with a comma separating them, a little too worked up and rigid in places.
There were long sections of commentaries about old Hollywood movies and stars or about milkshakes that go on for pages stopped making sense to me, felt exhausting and almost made me skim through them.
To me, this book is entirely an experience driven read. While I thoroughly enjoyed parts of it and know the experience wouldn’t have been the same any other way, I honestly feel that the truly random nuisance that felt artificially placed and the chunky repetitive parts made it a little monotonous and dull to the point of annoyance. They were may be for a purpose of showing how a person’s thoughts circle back to an underlaying issue or guilt that we might have, but it does become tedious to read that on paper.
For a 1000 page book, I did not go in expecting every page to hold my attention equally, but had it been a tad 200 pages shorter and more cohesive, it would’ve worked better as an overall reading experience.
I give this tome of a book a 3.5/5 and although I’m in the minority for not “loving” this one, I did really enjoy most of it.
An overwhelming and an extremely experimental work of fiction.
..the fact that I finally finished reading DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT, enjoyed it, was overwhelmed by it, exhausted, the fact that it was a roaster coaster ride, a monologue running a 1000 pages long, dear god, the fact that it took me a month to read this one, dipping in and out of the mind of a 50-something homebaker in Ohio and her random pool of thoughts all ranging from her personal relationships to gun violence, climate change, old Hollywood movies, Trump, oh my she really hates him, despises him, and I loved her wit for that, the fact that she’s never tired of thinking, while all I can think of right now is how to review this one. Oof!
Ducks, Newburyport is a single sentence, tireless stream-of-conscious narrative, an endless string of literally everything a that goes on inside the head of a homebaker in Ohio. She’s going about her daily chores, mixing the batter for her pies while at the back of her head her thoughts are relaying from her insecurities as a mother to the irresponsible killings of young black men and everything that’s wrong in the world. The idea was to address every possible thing that a wife and a mother consciously or unconsciously worry about; the safety of her children, her critical view of herself as a mother who’s not good enough for her kids or the increasing violence, gun laws and legal permits to keep weapons at home. Her anxiety, being in her 50s and mothering 4 kids, baking and delivering pies to make ends meet with his husband, is pretty evident.
Her thoughts are periodically broken by brief sections of a story of a mountain lioness, who seek to protect and find her cubs, her journey with and to them. These inserts were a pretty clever move by the author to offer a breather from her thoughts and draw a parallel and another aspect of one of her themes ie. Motherhood. I loved how the situation of a lioness on loose comes into her narration, the two plots intersecting very briefly and moving in their own separate ways after serving their purpose.
I did like her approach for the book, written the way it is, the projection of a housewife with a billion bizarre thoughts, both random and anxious, and I don’t think it would’ve done the same had it been written the traditional way. The hypnotic rhythm draws you in and feels like an almost natural buzzing of thoughts, getting in and out of a certain trance or memories triggered one after the other, like her thoughts bouncing from her relationship with her daughter to being a daughter herself and her guilt in both the respective roles. These bits were brilliantly done.
Having said all this, there were parts that did not work for me as a reader. Although the entire book is supposed to be a single running sentence, it doesn’t always read like one. Sections of it felt like a bunch of sentences strung together with a comma separating them, a little too worked up and rigid in places.
There were long sections of commentaries about old Hollywood movies and stars or about milkshakes that go on for pages stopped making sense to me, felt exhausting and almost made me skim through them.
To me, this book is entirely an experience driven read. While I thoroughly enjoyed parts of it and know the experience wouldn’t have been the same any other way, I honestly feel that the truly random nuisance that felt artificially placed and the chunky repetitive parts made it a little monotonous and dull to the point of annoyance. They were may be for a purpose of showing how a person’s thoughts circle back to an underlaying issue or guilt that we might have, but it does become tedious to read that on paper.
For a 1000 page book, I did not go in expecting every page to hold my attention equally, but had it been a tad 200 pages shorter and more cohesive, it would’ve worked better as an overall reading experience.
I give this tome of a book a 3.5/5 and although I’m in the minority for not “loving” this one, I did really enjoy most of it.
An overwhelming and an extremely experimental work of fiction.