A review by cameronbcook
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

5.0

This is a startlingly long book with one simple conceit—a run-on sentence from the mind of a woman who works at a small bakery and is raising a family. You’d think the well would run dry, but instead the reader is folded into the narrative through its cyclical musings. Dozens of pages digress into dozens more about Meryl Streep movies, traffic, Laura Ingalls Wilder, episodes of Matlock, recipes for cakes and muffins and cookies, the local flora and fauna of Ohio, different kinds of snow, raising young children, the expectations thrust upon young mothers, etc. It’s frequently funny, sometimes hysterically so, and can read like a long, long set of stand-up comedy. When the emotional weight of the novel finally lands, it hits like a hammer. This book will resonate for many years in my mind.