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DUCKS, NEWBURYPORT - LUCY ELLMAN
I'm shouting because it's that good.
The inner monologue and musings of a stay at home mother. Her every jumbled thought and innermost feeling. This is about nothing and everything all at the same time. There is no coherent narrative throughout, but as her mind wanders there and back again, she covers life, love, death, motherhood, politics, the environment, modern society, history and everything inbetween. It's witty and whimsical at the same time as being a very astute insight into modern American life. The language is repetitive and cyclic and it takes a little time to get into the rhythm of it, but once you do it's almost poetic. One to go with the flow with and let it carry you away. I did find the style a little jarring and annoying at first, but soon settled in. Although there is no plot and seemingly no point to it, things do start to link in together and there are clever little strands woven through it. There are some subtle in jokes that start to become apparent and amusing little comments that link back to something else. For something that makes little sense page by page the overall work is an astounding piece of writing.
The audio version is beautifully narrated and the woman has a lovely cadence that I found mesmerising. This is one you can tackle in small parts despite the length in either audio or print..
An excerpt so you know what you are letting yourselves in for if you go for it.
“If I die you’ll be sorry,” the fact that I was always thinking that as a kid, always thinking what if I died, and how everybody’d feel about it, how sorry they’d be, and ashamed, and regretful, the fact that I wonder if my kids think that every time anybody’s mean to them, or angry with them, the fact that you angrily think to yourself, they’ll feel bad if you die, but what if they don’t feel too bad about it, and your death will all be for nothing, for no reason, died for nothing, nil by mouth, DNR, the fact that I wish Leo was here more, just to keep me calm, the fact that it’s hard to be calm when ninety-three people get shot dead every day, and there are all these impatient coffee shop clients, and I have a daughter disgusted by my refusal to become vegan, and we got that guy in DC, the fact that I think he plans to just bluff his way through the whole presidency, the fact that he smells so good, Leo, not Trump, dear me, pollution, nuclear war, Nagasaki, sciatica, the fact that there was one poor man who witnessed both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I mean both bombs, the fact that he was in Hiroshima when the first bomb hit, survived and stayed the night in a bomb shelter, then managed to get home to Nagasaki the next day just in time for the second bomb, and he survived that one too, the fact that, I mean, how awful, vow renewal ceremony, “You’d be sorry if I died,” the fact that there are all these clubs now for people to “prepare” for the end of the world, Doomsday preppers.