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A review by mimosaeyes
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
5.0
I've gone completely mental, but this 1000-page, stream-of-consciousness, largely-single-sentence whopper... gets 5 stars from me. I'm reeling. I'm angry. I'm ecstatic. I really didn't think I'd genuinely enjoy this book.
The narrator is a housewife living in Ohio, making pies and looking after her four children and endlessly fretting, fretting, fretting over the state of America and the world. Of particular concern to her: gun violence, the animal world (as opposed to human "civilisation"), rape culture, and the callousness/irresponsibility of the capitalist complex. There are interludes of regular prose, following the story of a lioness and her cubs. Which sounds incongruous. But the whole thing comes together magnificently, and between that macro-structure and the talent and effort it must take to write in such an accretionary style... ahhh. A most satisfying read.
The narrator is a housewife living in Ohio, making pies and looking after her four children and endlessly fretting, fretting, fretting over the state of America and the world. Of particular concern to her: gun violence, the animal world (as opposed to human "civilisation"), rape culture, and the callousness/irresponsibility of the capitalist complex. There are interludes of regular prose, following the story of a lioness and her cubs. Which sounds incongruous. But the whole thing comes together magnificently, and between that macro-structure and the talent and effort it must take to write in such an accretionary style... ahhh. A most satisfying read.