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A review by andrew_russell
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
2.0
On an incredibly superficial and infinitely unimportant level, if there is one thing that 2020 has taught me, it is this - that there is a certain brand of US literature which simply doesn't agree with me. Lucy Ellmann's Ducks, Newburyport falls firmly and squarely within this category. Brick-like in size and trying to capture all that is important in the current affairs of US culture, it joins the company of other works, such as Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, Freedom by the same author, Night, Sleep, Death, The Stars by Joyce Carol Oates and Richard Powers The Overstory. US culture is probably the only culture in the world that is routinely funnelled into our everyday lives via social media and news channels on a moment-by-moment basis. Whether it's the latest tripe to come out of the mouth of Donald Trump, the death of yet another Black-American at the hands of over-zealous police officers, or a high-school shooting that re-ignites the age old debate around gun control legislation, you can be cast-iron sure that everyone with access to any communication device will be intimately aware of any developments around those aforementioned issues that might take place. All this of course begs the question, what can a book about US culture actually tell us?
Ellmann's work at least tries to defy many of the norms which we associate with works of fiction. In my humble opinion, this is done to too great a degree. Ducks, Newburyport is widely held to be composed of one single sentence. This is not true.
When you are all sinew, struggle and solitude, your young - being soft, plump, vulnerable - may remind you of prey.
This is the first sentence of the book. It is from the perspective of a mountain lionness, whose story intersects and eventually intertwines with that of our main female narrator. And the perspective of this mountain lionness includes many, many, many sentences more than the single one with which this novel is said to be composed. This is a seemingly trifling matter but it does lead on neatly to a more important flaw in the novel's structure. Our female narrator's story is said to be written in a 'stream of consciousness' and yet every single 'stream' begins with the words 'the fact that...'. Nobody thinks like that. Nobody. Ever. So it isn't stream of consciousness. But then, what is it? Well, arguably, it's simply self-indulgent. The chance for the author to try something a bit different from the norm and to hell with anything else. This 'the fact that' issue may not even be an issue in a small volume. But in a novel of over a thousand pages, it becomes a huge sticking point. If you're going to write something that long, you'd better be damned sure that it is beautifully crafted, linguistically and grammatically. Ducks, Newburyport is neither.
The book also trades depth for scope. Any number of issues, or topics are touched on. This really is an impressive facet of Ducks, Newburyport. But what offsets this impressiveness is the fact that they are fleeting snapshots. Nothing is said of import. Nothing is explored in any meaningful way, or to any level of depth that provokes thought in the reader. You could pick up The Guinness Book of Records and read it cover to cover and glean a more impressive roster of factoids to store away for some pub quiz. Such is the books dullness that I would defy any reader to be able to use any segment of text with which they are presented, to pinpoint the location in the book (to the nearest 100 pages).
Ducks, Newburyport is many things. Daring, bold, innovative and fresh, in one sense. But in another sense, it is also interminably dull, meaningless, overly long, self-indulgent and most of all, a pain in the arse to read. Particularly if you expect to take anything of any meaning away from the experience.
Ellmann's work at least tries to defy many of the norms which we associate with works of fiction. In my humble opinion, this is done to too great a degree. Ducks, Newburyport is widely held to be composed of one single sentence. This is not true.
When you are all sinew, struggle and solitude, your young - being soft, plump, vulnerable - may remind you of prey.
This is the first sentence of the book. It is from the perspective of a mountain lionness, whose story intersects and eventually intertwines with that of our main female narrator. And the perspective of this mountain lionness includes many, many, many sentences more than the single one with which this novel is said to be composed. This is a seemingly trifling matter but it does lead on neatly to a more important flaw in the novel's structure. Our female narrator's story is said to be written in a 'stream of consciousness' and yet every single 'stream' begins with the words 'the fact that...'. Nobody thinks like that. Nobody. Ever. So it isn't stream of consciousness. But then, what is it? Well, arguably, it's simply self-indulgent. The chance for the author to try something a bit different from the norm and to hell with anything else. This 'the fact that' issue may not even be an issue in a small volume. But in a novel of over a thousand pages, it becomes a huge sticking point. If you're going to write something that long, you'd better be damned sure that it is beautifully crafted, linguistically and grammatically. Ducks, Newburyport is neither.
The book also trades depth for scope. Any number of issues, or topics are touched on. This really is an impressive facet of Ducks, Newburyport. But what offsets this impressiveness is the fact that they are fleeting snapshots. Nothing is said of import. Nothing is explored in any meaningful way, or to any level of depth that provokes thought in the reader. You could pick up The Guinness Book of Records and read it cover to cover and glean a more impressive roster of factoids to store away for some pub quiz. Such is the books dullness that I would defy any reader to be able to use any segment of text with which they are presented, to pinpoint the location in the book (to the nearest 100 pages).
Ducks, Newburyport is many things. Daring, bold, innovative and fresh, in one sense. But in another sense, it is also interminably dull, meaningless, overly long, self-indulgent and most of all, a pain in the arse to read. Particularly if you expect to take anything of any meaning away from the experience.