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A review by plathfanclub
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
5.0
What a book! I've honestly not read anything like it. It was really hard to keep going at times - the book is almost entirely made up of one single sentence, tracing the train of thought of a stay at home mum in Ohio, but there was also something weirdly compelling about it. The threads started to come together towards the end and, while I wouldn't say there is a traditional plotline, things do happen.
Ann Powers once described Lana Del Rey as living in 'America's messy subconscious', and it's what came to mind while I read this book. The narrator's thoughts span pretty much everything: mundane tasks at home, baking, humorous observations, word play, past trauma, grief ('Mommy'), loneliness, illness, sex, gun crime, environmental destruction, male violence....it's fascinating from a social/historical lens as well as a literary perspective, and by the end I was hooked.
The narrator is really likeable - I will genuinely miss living inside her head. I would definitely also buy a recipe book if she released one! There are passages about a lioness and her cubs woven into the stream of consciousness narrative; I wasn't sure about them at first, but they made sense eventually.
I'm not sure I'd rush to read it again because of the size and difficulty, but I also know that re-reading it would be so rewarding, especially now I know what happens. Maybe in a few years!
Ann Powers once described Lana Del Rey as living in 'America's messy subconscious', and it's what came to mind while I read this book. The narrator's thoughts span pretty much everything: mundane tasks at home, baking, humorous observations, word play, past trauma, grief ('Mommy'), loneliness, illness, sex, gun crime, environmental destruction, male violence....it's fascinating from a social/historical lens as well as a literary perspective, and by the end I was hooked.
The narrator is really likeable - I will genuinely miss living inside her head. I would definitely also buy a recipe book if she released one! There are passages about a lioness and her cubs woven into the stream of consciousness narrative; I wasn't sure about them at first, but they made sense eventually.
I'm not sure I'd rush to read it again because of the size and difficulty, but I also know that re-reading it would be so rewarding, especially now I know what happens. Maybe in a few years!