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keegan_leech's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
It's hard to express what I liked so much about this book. At times, I found it very difficult to read. Typically not because of the unusual style, the single train of thought. It's actually surprisingly easy to just drift along, letting the words flow over you and through you. But because the novel consists so heavily of the fears and worries and everyday stresses of another ordinary person, it can be very difficult to read when you'd like to get away from your own fears and worries and everyday stresses.
It took me months to read, not because of the length or the density of the writing (although it is a very long book), but because I so often found myself unable to pick it up and worry alongside the narrator. Worry about gun culture and colonialism in the United States, about whether the windows of her house need re-varnishing, about ongoing environmental catastrophe, about whether a person can ever recover from the death of a parent, about what her daughter thinks of her favourite musicals, about the cruelties of industrial poultry farming, and so on for 1000 pages.... It was just difficult to read sometimes.
Despite this, I really would encourage anyone to try the book. Although I was often intimidated by it, I found it to be an immensely rewarding experience. It is an experiment that may not accomplish all it set out to do and may be a lot to take in, but which is exceptionally illuminating for the questions it forces you to ask while reading. I think that anyone who teaches say, an honours-level English literature course, could teach this novel on its own for a semester course, and have new discussions about it with their students for years on end. There is so much in the book to provoke thought and interest and exploration.
Even the most basic aspects of the book provoke interesting questions. There is a glossary of acronyms at the back of the book. I doubt that all of them are used in the book itself, and there isn't a practical reason for the glossary to be there, but it fascinates me! Why is it so important that I, the reader, be able to flip to the back of the book and check the two included definitions of "CGI"? Why have the definitions been "sanitized for your comfort" (for example "POS", is defined "piece of [scat]", square brackets in the original)? Why, since we're asking about the choices made in the book, is it called "Ducks, Newburyport" in the first place? It's a regularly-repeated phrase in the book, but not one that would feel defining or even especially noteworthy if it weren't the title.
There's more to the book than intellectual curiosity. At times I was enthralled, overcome with emotion, or wrapped up in the story (I was actually surprised to discover how much of a narrative there is in the book, because like the everyday stories we tell ourselves, it's a narrative that only really comes together in hindsight). Just the fact that the setting of the novel is so mundane, makes for a unique and charming read. But so much thought has gone into this novel, which elevates it from charming and unusual, to something that I'd urge people to seek out and try.
A decade from now, Ducks, Newburyport might not be remembered as a ground-breaking work of experimental literature. It might not even be a book that I remember or think of often. But right now, I can't stop thinking about how it made me feel, and how it made me think. I really do believe that the most anyone can ask of any book is that it provoke them, at least a little, that it change something about how they think, or make them feel something that they wouldn't have otherwise. In my case, this book has done all that and more.
It took me months to read, not because of the length or the density of the writing (although it is a very long book), but because I so often found myself unable to pick it up and worry alongside the narrator. Worry about gun culture and colonialism in the United States, about whether the windows of her house need re-varnishing, about ongoing environmental catastrophe, about whether a person can ever recover from the death of a parent, about what her daughter thinks of her favourite musicals, about the cruelties of industrial poultry farming, and so on for 1000 pages.... It was just difficult to read sometimes.
Despite this, I really would encourage anyone to try the book. Although I was often intimidated by it, I found it to be an immensely rewarding experience. It is an experiment that may not accomplish all it set out to do and may be a lot to take in, but which is exceptionally illuminating for the questions it forces you to ask while reading. I think that anyone who teaches say, an honours-level English literature course, could teach this novel on its own for a semester course, and have new discussions about it with their students for years on end. There is so much in the book to provoke thought and interest and exploration.
Even the most basic aspects of the book provoke interesting questions. There is a glossary of acronyms at the back of the book. I doubt that all of them are used in the book itself, and there isn't a practical reason for the glossary to be there, but it fascinates me! Why is it so important that I, the reader, be able to flip to the back of the book and check the two included definitions of "CGI"? Why have the definitions been "sanitized for your comfort" (for example "POS", is defined "piece of [scat]", square brackets in the original)? Why, since we're asking about the choices made in the book, is it called "Ducks, Newburyport" in the first place? It's a regularly-repeated phrase in the book, but not one that would feel defining or even especially noteworthy if it weren't the title.
There's more to the book than intellectual curiosity. At times I was enthralled, overcome with emotion, or wrapped up in the story (I was actually surprised to discover how much of a narrative there is in the book, because like the everyday stories we tell ourselves, it's a narrative that only really comes together in hindsight). Just the fact that the setting of the novel is so mundane, makes for a unique and charming read. But so much thought has gone into this novel, which elevates it from charming and unusual, to something that I'd urge people to seek out and try.
A decade from now, Ducks, Newburyport might not be remembered as a ground-breaking work of experimental literature. It might not even be a book that I remember or think of often. But right now, I can't stop thinking about how it made me feel, and how it made me think. I really do believe that the most anyone can ask of any book is that it provoke them, at least a little, that it change something about how they think, or make them feel something that they wouldn't have otherwise. In my case, this book has done all that and more.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent and Colonisation
Moderate: Cancer, Gun violence, Suicide, and Mass/school shootings
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Death, Domestic abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Hate crime, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual violence, Violence, Vomit, Police brutality, Stalking, Murder, and Sexual harassment
That's a lot of content warnings! Most of that content is mentioned in passing, with little more detail than might be in a news headline or summary. It's relatively clinical, and even the topics which appear most often or most directly tend not to be covered in detail. If it's "minor" then it's probably no more distressing than what you'd see in a news feed. However, loss of a parent, while there are almost no details mentioned, is a very persistent theme. Maybe not "graphic", but it's mentioned almost constantly throughout the almost 1000 pages. I've also given colonisation a "graphic", because of a very explicit quote describing a massacre of native Americans, althoughmc_easton's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Stylistically related to John Dos Passos, especially his U.S.A. trilogy, and the wilds of Robert Coover’s narrators (think A Public Burning), Ellmann tacks her ship in a different direction. If you’ve always wished a woman would hijack these experimental voices in service of a pie-baking, suburbanite housewife, then this is the novel for you. It may sound like I’m mocking Lucy Ellmann’s 998-page beast, but I emphatically am not. I’ve had a lifetime’s worth of assigned and recommended reading where men—most often a businessman or a wayward politician—spend hours on a train or behind the wheel of a car fretting over sales records or poll numbers, why breakfast tasted off, and whether he’ll be able to get it up that night. It’s high time that a mother baking pies, reflecting on her recovery from cancer, and worrying about toxins in drinking water gets equal literary treatment.
First, whatever else you may have heard, there is a story. But the narrator cannot get out of her own way—or the story’s—and this is the story, too. So we have the engine of a traditional plot, complete with foreshadowing, escalation, and a climax that made me weep and laugh hysterically all at once. We have an unexpected heroine and a villain, and the villain is quite easy to spot for any feminists out there—which adds to the suspense.
But for sheer page count, all that is the tiniest sliver. What makes up the bulk of this novel is stream of consciousness as the narrator goes about her life in a state of constant anxiety and complicated grief. She is exactly the white Gen X women I’ve known, and one senses Ellmann (in her mid-sixties) has both profound compassion and a shade of frustration with the generation right behind her own.
Punctuating this stream of consciousness, however, is the narrative of a cougar—also a mother—trying to survive in the landscape that humans have blighted. These passages are swift and deft—and very, very short. They are delivered in close-third from the cougar’s perspective, and the juxtaposition is powerful.
While our narrator frets endlessly (and ineffectually) about environmental destruction and her family’s safety, here we have another mind—one that is wholly engaged with reality here and now, who makes choices and takes action, and whose every thought is fit to purpose. In case you think I’m reaching, this is also the juxtaposition at the heart of the climax as well as the final lines of the novel. Ellmann is doing a lot with these pages, but above all, she is inviting us to stop spinning our wheels for a minute and instead just take action, however small that act or uncertain the outcome. It’s beautiful, really, to be reminded that we can save lives and even (hopefully) the planet if we just get out of our own way.
Content Warnings
Minor: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Body shaming, Cancer, Child abuse, Child death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Rape, Sexism, Sexual assault, Terminal illness, Violence, Police brutality, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Medical trauma, Stalking, Death of parent, Murder, Fire/Fire injury, Sexual harassment, and Colonisation