Ducks, Newburyport

Thanks, I hate it.
The fact that I dnf after 56 pages.

So this unbroken, stream of consciousness, chonker of a book that suffers from an extreme case of literary Tourettes (Kleenex, tardigrades, fatbergs, Abominable Snowman) can seem a massive bit of writerly trolling. Lucy Ellmann going Emperor's New Clothes as she continues to collect accolades and prizes. But I loved it nonetheless.

Clickbait tiles, brandnames, song snippets and the contents of the freezer are the manifestation of the monkey chatter, interior monologue that all of us are barely conscious of. Like skimming through the radio dial and picking up pieces of information, it firmly establishes the set and setting of a specific moment. It's no less than what T.S. Eliot is throwing out there in The Wasteland.

And we are completely in the world of an Ohio housewife in the year immediately after the 2016 US election. And yes, reading it in the current dumpster fire, murder hornets, pandemic, race riot moment seems almost quaint. But amidst the word salad there are thoughts on being a woman in this environment, a mother, wife and daughter. Feeling both completely invisible and an object of desire. To have beaten cancer but still contending with the medical bills. To harken to an idealized American ideal as seen in Little House on the Prairie, musicals, movies and the dog whistling of the president. How problematic that era was and how white racial structures have always been a part of the water white Americans have been swimming in. I mean you can fit a lot of ideas in 1000 pages.

And kudos to whoever was saddled with performing the audiobook version of this monster. I hope you got hazard pay.

This book is essentially all one sentence, which is a cool parameter and generally well executed. I ended up enjoying it but not as much as I hoped and the opportunity cost associated with the time of reading a 1,000 page book with no paragraph breaks wasn't really worth it for the novelty.

If you only ever read one thousand-page, experimental, existential-crisis-inducing book, make it this one. Belongs in the same company as “Mrs. Dalloway” and “Ulysses.” I absolutely mean that. Maybe I'll come back and write a longer, more comprehensive review, but I've just finished this book and I am reeling and I just need to make sure it's clear that when I say this book is five stars, I mean every bit of it.
Okay, I'm going to go collapse in bed and feel the universe spinning around me for the rest of the night.

249 days! It took me 249 days to finish this tome. There were many stops and starts along the way. Sometimes, I'd put this book aside just to read something else. I may have had a rotational checkout of this book with three different public libraries within 60 miles. At seven months in, I was at page 452 and I didn't see the point of going on. I put the book in the “to-go” box and didn't look back.

Within a couple of days, I changed my mind. I didn't know if the reward would be worth it, but I wouldn't know if I didn't try. I committed to fifteen pages a day. I could finish Duck, Newburyport in thirty days. And that's what I did.

I really don't know what to say about this book. I will say it's an experience. Was the reward worth it? No, I didn't think so. It's like being promised a grand vacation as a child and arriving to find out that the descriptions of your destination were vastly exaggerated. It only took seven months of “Are we there yet?” One thousand pages of “Are we there yet?” 19,396 “the fact that”'s of “Are we there yet?”

And yet... there was something mesmerizing about this work. It's as if the long car ride were the point of the journey. And what was the car ride? Well, it was the scenery. It was the rhythm of the tires on the road. But it was long.

There was one thing that personally annoyed me at no end that I haven't heard others mention. Ellmann's narrator is constantly bringing up movies, talking about them as though the reader has any idea what she's talking about. I was familiar with very few of them. She doesn't explain the references, just jumps right into talking about them, which is expected from a stream-of-conscious narrative, but is terribly taxing on a reader who has no idea what she's talking about. And they go on for pages: It's Complicated, Jane Fonda, Air Force One, Paul Henreid... It was the part of the journey where your parents turn on the kind of music you most hate and sing along. Combining all the movie references with The Little House on the Prairie references, and you've probably got more than 10% of the book. That might not normally be an issue, but we're talking about a thousand page book here. You know, some of us still read books.

Ducks, Newburyport is unforgettable and certainly an accomplishment for readers who make it through. It's not a book I'd recommend to very many readers (or maybe any). Honestly, I don't think I will ever again hear that one phrase and not think of this book.