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A review by bookofmirth
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
5.0
I didn't expect to like this. I got a copy from the library quite unexpectedly (I suggested they buy the ebook, they did, they emailed me), so I thought I'd just give it the ol' 50-page try.
This 1000-page book is almost all one sentence, featuring the thoughts of a housewife as she goes about her day making pies, caring for her children, thinking about her parents, the weird guy who delivers her chicken feed, Laura Ingells Wilder, gun violence, politics, and pretty much any other topic that we are bombarded with on a daily basis.
While it does seem disorienting at first (as I'm sure every stream-of-consciousness style book does), I quickly fell into a rhythm and found myself laughing, relating to, feeling alien from, and just... really engaged with this book. After a while, you start to notice inside jokes and quick, one-word references to events that the narrator had been thinking about earlier, and the word associations begin to make sense. There was a minute around 80% where I was really getting frustrated with the anxiety and fear present in nearly every thought - and I know that it's supposed to be indicative of how a lot of us feel about current events, but given that it was a nonstop barrage of thoughts, it was a bit much!
The final clause was brilliant.
This is definitely not a book for everyone, but I have to give it 5 stars because it was actually enjoyable, intelligent, and took a damn huge amount of talent to pull off.
This 1000-page book is almost all one sentence, featuring the thoughts of a housewife as she goes about her day making pies, caring for her children, thinking about her parents, the weird guy who delivers her chicken feed, Laura Ingells Wilder, gun violence, politics, and pretty much any other topic that we are bombarded with on a daily basis.
While it does seem disorienting at first (as I'm sure every stream-of-consciousness style book does), I quickly fell into a rhythm and found myself laughing, relating to, feeling alien from, and just... really engaged with this book. After a while, you start to notice inside jokes and quick, one-word references to events that the narrator had been thinking about earlier, and the word associations begin to make sense. There was a minute around 80% where I was really getting frustrated with the anxiety and fear present in nearly every thought - and I know that it's supposed to be indicative of how a lot of us feel about current events, but given that it was a nonstop barrage of thoughts, it was a bit much!
The final clause was brilliant.
This is definitely not a book for everyone, but I have to give it 5 stars because it was actually enjoyable, intelligent, and took a damn huge amount of talent to pull off.