A review by 20somethingspinster
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann

challenging emotional funny hopeful slow-paced

• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

The fact that it took me a while to collect my thoughts after finishing this one, the fact that it’s like walking out of a dark movie theater and the world feels so much brighter than it did before and it takes a moment for your eyes to adjust, the fact that the entire book is written as one long sentence with clauses separated by "the fact that," so if you’ve already gone out of your mind reading this review, then maybe dont read it, the fact that it’s really a book about the world according to an Ohio house wife recovering from cancer and the death of her mother, the fact that  its all about the little minutiae or domestic life, the specifics, pacific, pathetic, the fact that sometimes this book makes you feel pathetic, the fact that echoes the cacophony of anxiety that we all just walk around with and accept as normal, the fact that nothing we humans do is normal though,  just ask a mountain lion, the fact that this book switches between the perspective of the housewife and a mountain lion, both mothers just trying to survive, the fact that this is also a book about mothers, mother goose, Mother Earth, and how we don’t appreciate them enough, the fact that life is this big to-do and maybe that’s why we grow up resenting our mothers, the fact that maybe we feel like we never gave our consent to being a person and now it feels like a rip off, the fact despite it all though, it’s pretty life affirming story, the fact that it reminds you of things like the way water loves itself so much that it’s always pooling together, or that there’s just no way a newly opened poppy isn’t thrilled to be alive, the fact that it’s all very Capital-R-Romantic, the fact that it’s like a feminist counterpoint to Joyce’s Ulysses, but where Ulysses was all about a man coming home, this book is a story about a woman staying home, the fact that reading this was like squinting at those magic eye posters, the fact that it can make your head hurt, but eventually a picture takes shape, the fact that sometimes that picture is horrific, but sometimes it’s really beautiful.