A review by tildafin16
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

4.0

Well: I thought I might really struggle with this, but if the measure of a book for me is the extent to which it will stay with me over time, I suspect this is a winner. I read it slowly - a few per cent each day on kindle, which really helped me slow down and savour the words and not fall into just skipping over too much content to get through. I found myself feeling really fond of the narrator /thinker, and her family and looking forward to my visit to her each day! I don’t like the constant use of ‘the fact that’, I came to tune it out and it didn’t bother me but it didn’t seem right to me as part of a thought process and i thought the flow could still have been achieved without it - but then what do I know, maybe not. I also didn’t enjoy an event that happens near the end because I felt it just was - slightly fantastical and not quite right with the ‘everyday ness’ of the rest of the book, which to me was enough in and of itself. Having read interviews with the author she comes over a little pretentious, and I know some feel the experiment here is too - but I have to say the book for me is warm, human and funny.