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A review by scorwin
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
4.0
The fact that as tempting as it may be to "review" Ducks, Newburyport in this format it would an overused and exhaustive exercise, the fact that countless readers before me have beaten me to the punch, the fact that I decidedly lack Ellmann's virtuosity and this would likely become grating to read after the third clause... the fact that I think I've made my point.
This novel is an overwhelming, singular experience. This 1.8lb (yes, I weighed it) brick is, at its most conceptual level, an enormous paradox of utter ignorance and profound brilliance. As I alluded to above, it's the culmination of thousands of independent clauses and non-sequiturs that abandons traditional grammar in favour of a Joycean stream-of-conscious. Let me reiterate: over a thousand pages, in one sentence. Well, sort of - there are occasional interludes of conventional prose told from an... "unconventional narrator". I have no doubt that this approach will unapologetically alienate large swathes of Ellmann’s audience. But to those who remain and are willing to plumb the depths of this narrator’s mind, they will find beautiful paroxysms of anxiety, a host of very twenty-first century fears, and new perspective on what it means to have an identity.
This novel will test the upper limits of the reader's patience and I considered abandoning ship every hundred pages or so. Yet something kept drawing me back to it and knew I couldn't leave this one-of-kind novel unfinished. Ellmann's creative genius (and I don't use that word lightly) is in her knowledge that the mind comprises an endless stream of noise. If you're willing to sift through it, you will - and I promise you this - find meditations on the human condition that I'm confident have never been captured before.
This novel is an overwhelming, singular experience. This 1.8lb (yes, I weighed it) brick is, at its most conceptual level, an enormous paradox of utter ignorance and profound brilliance. As I alluded to above, it's the culmination of thousands of independent clauses and non-sequiturs that abandons traditional grammar in favour of a Joycean stream-of-conscious. Let me reiterate: over a thousand pages, in one sentence. Well, sort of - there are occasional interludes of conventional prose told from an... "unconventional narrator". I have no doubt that this approach will unapologetically alienate large swathes of Ellmann’s audience. But to those who remain and are willing to plumb the depths of this narrator’s mind, they will find beautiful paroxysms of anxiety, a host of very twenty-first century fears, and new perspective on what it means to have an identity.
This novel will test the upper limits of the reader's patience and I considered abandoning ship every hundred pages or so. Yet something kept drawing me back to it and knew I couldn't leave this one-of-kind novel unfinished. Ellmann's creative genius (and I don't use that word lightly) is in her knowledge that the mind comprises an endless stream of noise. If you're willing to sift through it, you will - and I promise you this - find meditations on the human condition that I'm confident have never been captured before.