Ducks, Newburyport

Insofar as this reminds me of my time with Swann's Way, I'm tempted to summarize it as 'What if Proust had to deal with motherhood, too?'

I can appreciate the writing craft in the construction, the reproduction of a believable inner monologue: jumping from thought to thought, thinking about the past and future, anxieties of all kinds, dreams, old movies, bumping into conservative views of where they're now living; how the author manages to wend in formative experiences of the protagonist as a child and information about family and friends, and inform the reader of the day to day recent events as they happen; a lot of commentary is worked into the worries, the infiltration of fears intertwined with news headlines; and you get a sense of the narrator/protagonist's character and attributes; how the writing frequently calls back to previous words or topics, and also segues on a dime somewhere else; and then there's the mountain lion and her cubs' interstitials, how that narrative develops and might keep the reader slightly more invested when the protagonist's fussing gets a bit much; how there is a peak in action at the very end, and a weaving of the two narratives together.

While the climax does seem to provide a better outlook and relationship for one character, it doesn't seem to provide a fundamental shift in the narrator's thought process, the fussing continues. The main message conveyed seems to be a permanent dread of all the social ills of modern times, relatable, but not particularly original. It's also tricky considering this as coherent commentary because the refrain of this person's thoughts is relentlessly introduced by the phrase 'the fact that', even when the facts are opinions or incorrect items acknowledged as wrong a paragraph later. Valid for an individual brain chugging along, but not necessarily helpful to the reader.

Depending on your idea of fun, if you had a spreadsheet, a box of highlighters and bushels of tabs, annotating and tracking how words and concepts emerge and repeat might make for many hours of entertaining investigation, but that's not necessarily equivalent to a good reading experience.

⚠️Attempted assault, fatphobia, suicide, animal death, discussion of gun violence, animal cruelty, hate crimes, racism, domestic violence, basically all the types of violence you could think of

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.