Scan barcode
A review by mayasophia
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This beast was a feat to read, and I’m sure to write, as well.
This novel is a 1000 page sentence that is the internal monologue of a wife and mother from Ohio as she spends her days baking tarte tatins for local restaurants, and every new thought begins with “the fact that”. She contemplates just about every facet of life in America and familial relationships intelligently and, at times, quite comically.
It is obviously a brilliant and wholly unique novel. I don’t think anything like it has ever been done, and I think if anyone else ever endeavored to do it, they wouldn’t be able to do it as well as Lucy Ellmann did it.
That said, I do think this could have been half as long and accomplished the exact same thing. I loved the first 150 pages and the last 250 pages, but the middle part often felt like I could have skipped large chunks of it and barely missed a thing. I also struggled a lot with how time is structured in the novel because there aren’t clear demarcations of days or weeks or months, and I think that because of it, I found it challenging to understand the internal logic of why it was as long as it was.
The good certainly outweighs the bad in this one and our unnamed narrator is endearing and funny and flawed and when the story hit its stride, it flowed very seamlessly.
This novel is a 1000 page sentence that is the internal monologue of a wife and mother from Ohio as she spends her days baking tarte tatins for local restaurants, and every new thought begins with “the fact that”. She contemplates just about every facet of life in America and familial relationships intelligently and, at times, quite comically.
It is obviously a brilliant and wholly unique novel. I don’t think anything like it has ever been done, and I think if anyone else ever endeavored to do it, they wouldn’t be able to do it as well as Lucy Ellmann did it.
That said, I do think this could have been half as long and accomplished the exact same thing. I loved the first 150 pages and the last 250 pages, but the middle part often felt like I could have skipped large chunks of it and barely missed a thing. I also struggled a lot with how time is structured in the novel because there aren’t clear demarcations of days or weeks or months, and I think that because of it, I found it challenging to understand the internal logic of why it was as long as it was.
The good certainly outweighs the bad in this one and our unnamed narrator is endearing and funny and flawed and when the story hit its stride, it flowed very seamlessly.