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A review by mwx1010
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
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.