Ducks, Newburyport

ISBN: 9781771963077

Год издания: 2019

Язык: Английский

Теги:  Booker shortlist, Англицкий, АмерикаВсе теги

MARTIN RIKER, THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

"For most of its 1,000 pages, Lucy Ellmann's brilliantly ambitious seventh novel follows the unspooling consciousness of an Ohio housewife circa 2017, and does so almost entirely in one long, lyrical, constantly surprising sentence ... her voice has a distinct cadence ... since she is a curious, politically conscious, slightly frenetic person, we step into and out of subjects from Donald Trump to purple martins, global warming to Laura Ingalls Wilder, animal cruelty, school shootings, SpaghettiOs, industrial pollution, hydrangeas, even the word 'hydrangea' ... At times there's such fury to these ruminations that the book seems to shift into direct cultural critique; at other times it all seems simply part of the story. The author's hand never points us either way ... Whatever strangeness it presents has to do with the fact that, notwithstanding Ellmann's great skills in narrative and character development, the overall effect is less plot-driven drama than vast existential collage. This is a novel, but it is also, fundamentally, a very long and meaningful list ... as accumulative, as pointed, as death-addled, as joyous, as storied, as multitudinous and as large as life."