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A review by shoulder_pads
Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann
5.0
I don't think I can properly express how much I loved this book. It's a love letter to the human race, chronicling the complexities and details that make up the running monologue inside everyone. Every little fact that we pick up, every novel we read, every person we interact with, all gathers like a snowball in our minds to form a completely unique and complex collection of thoughts that make us who we are. The narrator's little tics, her neuroses, Laura Ingalls Wilder, pastry baking, her backyard chickens, her children, her husband, her mother, they all work over the course of this massive 1000 page novel to create this person who feels so real, and insanely relatable.
I have a lot more thoughts about this novel but at its core it made me think deeply about the roles of motherhood, domesticity, the beauty to be found in your own backyard, and finding your place in a world you have little control over. Despite its length and one sentence format, I found this book to be a relatively "easy" read on the surface, and I could really feel how much love and attention was put into it.
I totally get why people don't like this book and could be put off by it, but it's easily one of the best novels I've read in recent memory and I loved both its ambition and its execution.
I have a lot more thoughts about this novel but at its core it made me think deeply about the roles of motherhood, domesticity, the beauty to be found in your own backyard, and finding your place in a world you have little control over. Despite its length and one sentence format, I found this book to be a relatively "easy" read on the surface, and I could really feel how much love and attention was put into it.
I totally get why people don't like this book and could be put off by it, but it's easily one of the best novels I've read in recent memory and I loved both its ambition and its execution.