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A review by keegan_leech
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It's hard to express what I liked so much about this book. At times, I found it very difficult to read. Typically not because of the unusual style, the single train of thought. It's actually surprisingly easy to just drift along, letting the words flow over you and through you. But because the novel consists so heavily of the fears and worries and everyday stresses of another ordinary person, it can be very difficult to read when you'd like to get away from your own fears and worries and everyday stresses.
It took me months to read, not because of the length or the density of the writing (although it is a very long book), but because I so often found myself unable to pick it up and worry alongside the narrator. Worry about gun culture and colonialism in the United States, about whether the windows of her house need re-varnishing, about ongoing environmental catastrophe, about whether a person can ever recover from the death of a parent, about what her daughter thinks of her favourite musicals, about the cruelties of industrial poultry farming, and so on for 1000 pages.... It was just difficult to read sometimes.
Despite this, I really would encourage anyone to try the book. Although I was often intimidated by it, I found it to be an immensely rewarding experience. It is an experiment that may not accomplish all it set out to do and may be a lot to take in, but which is exceptionally illuminating for the questions it forces you to ask while reading. I think that anyone who teaches say, an honours-level English literature course, could teach this novel on its own for a semester course, and have new discussions about it with their students for years on end. There is so much in the book to provoke thought and interest and exploration.
Even the most basic aspects of the book provoke interesting questions. There is a glossary of acronyms at the back of the book. I doubt that all of them are used in the book itself, and there isn't a practical reason for the glossary to be there, but it fascinates me! Why is it so important that I, the reader, be able to flip to the back of the book and check the two included definitions of "CGI"? Why have the definitions been "sanitized for your comfort" (for example "POS", is defined "piece of [scat]", square brackets in the original)? Why, since we're asking about the choices made in the book, is it called "Ducks, Newburyport" in the first place? It's a regularly-repeated phrase in the book, but not one that would feel defining or even especially noteworthy if it weren't the title.
There's more to the book than intellectual curiosity. At times I was enthralled, overcome with emotion, or wrapped up in the story (I was actually surprised to discover how much of a narrative there is in the book, because like the everyday stories we tell ourselves, it's a narrative that only really comes together in hindsight). Just the fact that the setting of the novel is so mundane, makes for a unique and charming read. But so much thought has gone into this novel, which elevates it from charming and unusual, to something that I'd urge people to seek out and try.
A decade from now, Ducks, Newburyport might not be remembered as a ground-breaking work of experimental literature. It might not even be a book that I remember or think of often. But right now, I can't stop thinking about how it made me feel, and how it made me think. I really do believe that the most anyone can ask of any book is that it provoke them, at least a little, that it change something about how they think, or make them feel something that they wouldn't have otherwise. In my case, this book has done all that and more.
It took me months to read, not because of the length or the density of the writing (although it is a very long book), but because I so often found myself unable to pick it up and worry alongside the narrator. Worry about gun culture and colonialism in the United States, about whether the windows of her house need re-varnishing, about ongoing environmental catastrophe, about whether a person can ever recover from the death of a parent, about what her daughter thinks of her favourite musicals, about the cruelties of industrial poultry farming, and so on for 1000 pages.... It was just difficult to read sometimes.
Despite this, I really would encourage anyone to try the book. Although I was often intimidated by it, I found it to be an immensely rewarding experience. It is an experiment that may not accomplish all it set out to do and may be a lot to take in, but which is exceptionally illuminating for the questions it forces you to ask while reading. I think that anyone who teaches say, an honours-level English literature course, could teach this novel on its own for a semester course, and have new discussions about it with their students for years on end. There is so much in the book to provoke thought and interest and exploration.
Even the most basic aspects of the book provoke interesting questions. There is a glossary of acronyms at the back of the book. I doubt that all of them are used in the book itself, and there isn't a practical reason for the glossary to be there, but it fascinates me! Why is it so important that I, the reader, be able to flip to the back of the book and check the two included definitions of "CGI"? Why have the definitions been "sanitized for your comfort" (for example "POS", is defined "piece of [scat]", square brackets in the original)? Why, since we're asking about the choices made in the book, is it called "Ducks, Newburyport" in the first place? It's a regularly-repeated phrase in the book, but not one that would feel defining or even especially noteworthy if it weren't the title.
There's more to the book than intellectual curiosity. At times I was enthralled, overcome with emotion, or wrapped up in the story (I was actually surprised to discover how much of a narrative there is in the book, because like the everyday stories we tell ourselves, it's a narrative that only really comes together in hindsight). Just the fact that the setting of the novel is so mundane, makes for a unique and charming read. But so much thought has gone into this novel, which elevates it from charming and unusual, to something that I'd urge people to seek out and try.
A decade from now, Ducks, Newburyport might not be remembered as a ground-breaking work of experimental literature. It might not even be a book that I remember or think of often. But right now, I can't stop thinking about how it made me feel, and how it made me think. I really do believe that the most anyone can ask of any book is that it provoke them, at least a little, that it change something about how they think, or make them feel something that they wouldn't have otherwise. In my case, this book has done all that and more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent and Colonisation
Moderate: Cancer, Gun violence, Suicide, and Mass/school shootings
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual violence, Violence, Vomit, Police brutality, Stalking, Murder, and Sexual harassment
That's a lot of content warnings! Most of that content is mentioned in passing, with little more detail than might be in a news headline or summary. It's relatively clinical, and even the topics which appear most often or most directly tend not to be covered in detail. If it's "minor" then it's probably no more distressing than what you'd see in a news feed.
However, loss of a parent, while there are almost no details mentioned, is a very persistent theme. Maybe not "graphic", but it's mentioned almost constantly throughout the almost 1000 pages. I've also given colonisation a "graphic", because of a very explicit quote describing a massacre of native Americans, although as far as I remember, it was an epigraph quote, and the main content of the book was less explicit .
Cancer and gun violence are also mentioned very regularly, and so get a "moderate" even though this is also not graphic. Suicide also gets a "moderate" because at some point an animal witnesses a death by suicide, and while this is described pretty explicitly, the description is relatively detached and naïve about what's happening .