Season 10 of the Two Month Review: “Ducks, Newburyport” by Lucy Ellmann

This Thursday (9/26), the final podcast in the ninth season of the Two Month Review will drop, wrapping up our discussion of Kjersti Skomsvold’s Monsterhuman, which is translated from the Norwegian by Becky Crook. Which means that it’s time for SEASON TEN. (Ten!?!)

And for the first time ever, we’re going to be focusing on a book that was originally written in English: Ducks, Newburyport by Lucy Ellmann. Clocking in at just over 1,000 pages (depending on if you count the list of acronyms in the back or not), this is a single-sentence rant about America, Trump, gun violence, Flint’s water problems, Jared Kushner . . . well, basically everything that is now.

From Parul Sehgal’s New York Times review:

“Ducks, Newburyport,” the new novel by Lucy Ellmann, recently shortlisted for the Booker Prize, unspools as a 426,100-word sentence that stretches over 1,000 pages — occasionally interrupted by a more traditional story, albeit one from the point of view of a mountain lioness. It seems designed to thwart the timid or lazy reader but shouldn’t. Timid, lazy readers to the front! Ellmann’s unnamed narrator, a mother of four living in Ohio, has a cutting power of observation and a depressive charm. “Being good-looking means you have to try to stay good-looking and that’s stressful,” she says. This book has its face pressed up against the pane of the present; its form mimics the way our minds move now: toggling between tabs, between the needs of small children and aging parents, between news of ecological collapse and school shootings while somehow remembering to pay taxes and fold the laundry. [. . .]

The narrator of “Ducks, Newburyport,” however, is consumed with the troubles and triumphs of others (ineffectually, as she’ll hasten to tell you): her four children and husband, people in Flint, Mich., forced to pay $200 in monthly water bills, families starving in Syria. Coming across a pigeon egg, she considers incubating it in her bra. Her dreams are full of animals she cannot save, people she cannot protect. She is haunted by the death of her mother. “Nobody fixes anything,” she laments, “not faucets, not window frames, not the Ohio River, the fact that sea salt now contains microplastics, the fact that coelacanths die now from eating plastic potato chip bags at the bottom of the ocean, the fact that sometimes I think that people today must be the saddest people ever, because we know we ruined everything, even geraniums probably, the fact that, heavens to Betsy, I’m sure people haven’t always lived in such a constant state of alarm.”

It’s hard to think of a book that’s better suited to the digressive, humorous, nature of this podcast . . .

The first episode will be broadcast on YouTube next Monday, September 30th and will be available as a podcast on Thursday, October 2nd. Here’s the schedule for the whole season in case you want to read along (and even if you don’t, I think you’re going to be able to enjoy and get a lot out of this season):

October 2: Pages 1-81

October 9: 81-150

October 16: 151-231

October 23: 231-297

October 30: 297-360

November 6: 360-429

November 13: 429-487

November 20: 487-562

November 27: 562-621

December 4: 621-700

December 11: 701-776

December 18: 776-862

December 23: 862-917

December 30: 917-1020

The second printing should be arriving at bookstores now, so go visit your local indie and pick up a copy. Biblioasis is taking a great risk publishing a book of this size and it would be great to help them get a real win . . .

And if you’re in the UK, pick up the Galley Beggar edition. I’m pretty sure the pagination is the same, so the above schedule should work, and it’s great to support GB.

One last note: Ducks is a finalist for the Booker Prize, the winner of which will be announced in mid-October. Fingers crossed!