Ducks, Newburyport Paperback – September 10, 2019

This was a finalist for a Booker Prize last year and included in the Jury citation according to the book cover was "Unstoppable...like nothing you've ever read before." I agree and I enjoyed reading every single page despite the length.Trying to describe the book makes it sound anything other than a great read. A middle class housewife in northeaster Ohio relates the story of her life, her family and her thoughts about the horrors of current day Trumpian America through a stream of consciousness presented as a single almost thousand page sentence. Rather her thoughts, whether they be about the Open Carry nutters or about the pies the narrator bakes in her in home business (mostly making tartes tatin), about domestic abuse or trying to get someone to stop and help her fix her flat tire in the middle of a snow storm, are separated by commas and the phrase "the fact that". As weird as that sounds, it creates a rhythm and ambiance that I found quickly easy to read and creative of an environment that made the narrator's thoughts fascinating. It is not just a gimmick but rather a demonstration of what really good writing can do.The narrator's story is not completely presented without a break; every so often her thoughts are replaced by a conventionally told story of a mountain lion mother who has her kits stolen by a human while she is away hunting and the search she goes on to recover them. As the book reaches its conclusion, the story of the mountain lion mama(presented a page or two at a time with regular sentences and paragraphs etc) merges with narrator's life. There is, in other words, a plot to this story and I think most readers of literary fiction would find Ducks, Newburyport as great a read as I did. The exception are Trump fans, gun nuts, mysogenists, etc. who will find all of this to be "fake news".

This book is a fascinating extrapolation of the thoughts that flow through a housewife’s mind as she experiences various life events over the course of an unspecified period of time. This is a book to live in and it’s best taken a little every day rather than charged through. The reader easily falls into the rhythms of the writing and you will soon long for the time you spend with this woman. Events happen, you get to know the people and animals in her life, and her thoughts echo around inside her skull - and yours as you continue hearing “the fact that” after you put the book down each day. She is very likable and you feel the things she feels. That’s great writing.

This is a really unique book. However, the length, nearly 1,000 pages, is completely absurd. It’s a big ask! I’m a little shocked I made it all the way to the end. There’s really too much of it – at half the length I think the impact would have been much greater, and the read would have been much less exhausting. But I did enjoy lots of it. And maybe I’m glad I stuck with it?Sometimes it felt like the whole world was in the book… and apparently a lot of what’s in the world is pretty banal and dull! But sometimes I liked the way that seemingly everyday kind of stuff the narrator thought about from her own past, brought up all kinds of associations and memories from my own past, stuff that I doubt I would have ever recalled without the spark from this text. For every reader I think there would be different sparks.In case you didn’t know, the book is almost entirely made up of the extremely rambling interior thoughts of a middle-aged mother of four in Ohio, who used to be a teacher, but is now a maker of pies.I enjoyed the passages about old movies and the narrator’s feelings about them – her rambling thoughts on different actors and actresses, the roles they were playing and their real lives too. I appreciated the way worries about contemporary society, politics, gun culture, police violence kept intruding into the narrator’s quiet, baking and family life thoughts.Some passages I found a bit ridiculous – when things occasionally got serious, the book felt at its most phony. I definitely could have lived without the story breaks for the nature documentary-like passages of the life of lioness. For me it really didn’t add anything to the book – except even more pages. Some of the narrator’s tics started to annoy, like the hundred times she would clarify who she was talking about if she’d just mentioned two people, when it was already perfectly clear who she was talking about. I did also find it slightly annoying that whenever anything started to happen in the narrator’s life, the section would end, we’d have a break into the lioness section, then come back to the narrator rambling about something completely uninteresting for five or ten pages, or if not uninteresting, at least unrelated to where we left off, before finally getting back to what actually ended up happening in the previous section, now resolved. And of course, some of the unfocused rambling stream-of-consciousness word associations did get to be a bit much, lists of rivers, lists of bridges, towns.The thing is, I really am giving the book four stars for being something unique. Because it does stuff that no other book I’ve come across does, while still being readable, clear, and sometimes even funny - it’s probably the most memorable book I’ve read in a long, long time.

When I heard about someone writing a novel composed of one long sentence of 1000 pages, I snickered, “Yeah, who wouldn’t want to read that!” But I picked it up at a bookstore and just started reading in the middle. So astonished was I that I rushed home and ordered it from Amazon. The last time a novel held me so enthralled was five years ago, when I read Matthiessen’s Shadow Country. This book is NOT difficult. When it was time to abandon it for a few hours, I inserted a book dart in the margin and was able to pick up again without a trace of difficulty. Some have been daunted by the frequency of the phrase “the fact that,” but it’s only connective tissue, and eventually one doesn’t notice it.The unnamed narrator became to me as real as any of the great characters in literature. A plot of sorts even develops, but this is of less importance than the overall effect on the reader. It is a compulsive, propulsive reading experience like no other. As a male, I discovered that I was learning a LOT about women and how they think and feel. In short, I want everyone to read this magnificent book. If you started it and can’t continue, try again. Although I’ve lent my copy to my cousin, I will surely read it again in future.

This is so stylistically and structurally unique that I’d have probably gotten enough satisfaction just from those elements. But in the extreme stream-of-consciousness of our quintessential Ohioan housewife, there is a whole lot to unpack.It is somewhat difficult to read. Not because it’s like 8 run-on sentences separated with commas. But because within the stream, there are so many references to media and memories, and other associations. It’s emergent thinking. Not wholly unedited, of course. It’s self-evident there is a lot of writer craft at work to make this consumable. The sentence construction, the timing of the references, and the length of the sentences themselves, all signal to the reader when the natural breathing points are. And the references will send your own mind out on spirals that mimic the digressions of the protagonist, so you’ll naturally be pausing.I did sometimes get a bit too daydreamy and in my own head after some time though. I would take short breaks every 50 pages or so and then come back to it. And I think that’s sort of meant to be. The longer the text you’ve consumed percolates the more connections you’ll draw between things.And things do coalesce quite a bit; more than I’d expected, actually. There begins to be some reoccurring themes. Mostly, they center on modern anxieties such as gun violence, climate change, media consumption, political ramifications of Trump in office, pollution, the generational gap between herself and her kids, and death, in general.These all become the centrifugal force with which our housewife orbits continually, which then draws them in sharper definition. They end up encapsulating the 2017-2018 “moment” of life in western culture and the US incredibly vividly. And, later, the sort-of plot situates those subjects directly into the housewife’s life. There is masterful foreshadowing at work.It’s also just mesmeric and beautiful. Thoughts you’ve had, or ones like them, will appear from time to time, and those create a bond between the text and reader that rivals the empathy felt for other characters in other books, in my experience. Within the granularity, there is a universal human experience that resonates.Absolutely fantastic read and I think one I'd re-read in the future. Recommend it as an off and on side book with other goings-on. Take your time with it and be patient with yourself. It’s in no hurry (though the last 100+ pages will be gripping—I won’t say why).

Pleasantly surprised to receive the book in perfect condition and that too at a lower price than usual. Expectations exceeded. Page quality, quality of the book everything is highly satisfactory...

essa avaliação serve unicamente como um aviso sobre essa edição: ela é ruim. são cerca de 1030 páginas em papel offset branco, com encadernação simples, em formato 12 x 19cm, o que faz com que a partir da página 40 o livro se torne cada vez mais difícil de manusear. não tive em mãos a outra versão, a de capa azul, por isso não sei se ambas de equivalem, mas o fato é que essa da Biblioasis impressiona pela dificuldade que impõe à leitura. talvez nesse caso um e-book seja a melhor opção.

I read the other 6 novels which had been shortlisted for the Orwell Political Fiction prize and, wanting to read them all before the winner was announced, I'm afraid I skim- read this lengthy novel in order to make my own judgement before the winner was announced. 'The fact is' this was a bad decision. 'The fact is this book needs careful, concentrated reading, preferably in large chunks. 'The fact is' I have now done 'Ducks' justice by reading it in this manner and 'the fact is' it is a wonderful read. This time , I fully engaged with the narrator and 'the fact is' I have annoyed my husband by occasionally slipping into the narrator's stream of consciousness, free association style. I love the honesty in this novel about the pains as well as the joys of parenting and the way in which the two narrative strands start to entwine. 'The fact is' it is an absolute masterpiece.

Thought provoking, funny and relatable! I thoroughly enjoyed this work of genius, so much to take away from it! Was daunted at first but quickly can get into the rhythm, and it works really well. If you've been considering picking up this book, do it!