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Ducks, Newburyport

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Ducks, Newburyport

Written by: Lucy Ellmann
Narrated by: Stephanie Ellyne
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About this listen

Baking a multitude of tartes tatins for local restaurants, an Ohio housewife contemplates her four kids, husband, cats and chickens. Also, America's ignoble past, and her own regrets. She is surrounded by dead lakes, fake facts, open carry maniacs, and oodles of online advice about survivalism, veil toss duties, and how to be more like Jane Fonda.

But what do you do when you keep stepping on your son's toy tractors, your life depends on stolen land and broken treaties, and nobody helps you when you get a flat tire on the interstate, not even the Abominable Snowman? When are you allowed to start swearing?

With a torrent of consciousness and an intoxicating coziness, Ducks, Newburyport lays out a whole world for you to tramp around in, by turns frightening and funny. A heart-rending indictment of America's barbarity, and a lament for the way we are blundering into environmental disaster, this book is both heresy - and a revolution in the novel.

©2019 Lucy Ellmann (P)2020 Recorded Books Animals Fiction Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Women's Fiction Heartfelt
All stars
Most relevant
The fact that the narrator breathed so much life into this work, the fact that I tried to give up on it more than once, the fact that I kept coming back to it, the fact that I found the voice-in-the-head relaxing to listen to, the fact that there is actually a plot if you make it all the way through, the fact that now I start every thought with "the fact that..."

What a performance

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The fact that this novel is an experimental meditation on being a suburban mom in post Trump pre covid America written in a single unending sentence intertwined with a short conventionally written story about a mother lion and her cubs with obvious parallel resonances throughout. Excellent narration is the icing on the cake.

Surreal, plain, cozy, bewildering, staggering...

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Masterful. Brilliant. Compassionate. An amazing read.
Shortlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize.
A winner by any measure!

Short listed for 2019 Booker Prize.

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