Ducks, Newburyport Kindle Edition

In my experience there are two types of "reader": people who really do enjoy reading; and people who are merely consumers, quickly ingesting one shiny cover after another. What this book does is generously rewards the careful, deliberate reader with a work of genius on several levels. More than just a period piece that chronicles the fearful, cynical, pessimistic spirit of contemporary America, the book offers a shrine to Motherhood in a way that secures its place in universally-relevant literature. Formally speaking, yes, it's a thousand pages; it is mostly one, hypotaxic sentence; it takes place almost entirely inside a forty-something housewife's head; and it all happens within mostly one day. So, it's both innovative and challenging. It usurps Joyce and Krasznahorkai for longest sentence. It makes exhaustive use of anaphora and asyndeton in a way that will either delight or discourage. Nonetheless, there is a parallel narrative of Nature and humanity that communicates something essential and timeless that can connect us as easily as it can break us.

This is like nothing I have ever experienced before, and it is LOVELY. A literary adventure that will both challenge and enthrall you. Ducks, Newburyport made me fall in love with reading again.

Loving this so far. It's unusual, and you have to accept that if you're going to enjoy it. It's like you're eavesdropping on a woman's thoughts while she's going about her life.Truth is, I often don't care for the "shortlisted for _______ award" books. They're too snooty or verbose or something for me. I like a book that just goes - I don't want to work to read it. And this one just goes.I only got to the first 40 or so pages yesterday, and today, all day, it kept popping into my thoughts. I look forward to this one keeping me company for weeks (ok, probably months) ahead.

It is quite a feat to draft a 1,000 page sentence, and I thought the author made a good run at it. I was surprised it was as readable as it was. I enjoyed the feeling it gave me of living in someone else’s brain for a while. But at the end of the day (well, the end of the two weeks, actually), I could not get through it. There just wasn’t any narrative momentum that I could find. Maybe I’m a literary lightweight, I could never get into Ulysses either...

I’m trying not to scream over all the wasted print and time I have to read “the fact that”, so i may have to put this book in the little wooden library houses in our neighborhood. Going to keep trying but geez, it’s very annoying!

Delightful. Hilarious. Harrowing. Dark.A completely different reading experience but one that will stick with me for a long time.

The stream of consciousness style is appalling. If I could rate it zero, I would!

I read five pages and couldn't stop feeling like I was the little boy in The Emperor's New Clothes. I'm calling this book out - the emperor has no clothes on. I am a follower of Booker short-listers and winners so I wanted to love this book, but it gave me an acute sense of revulsion and frustration. HARD pass. I returned it. I'm not saying I'm qualified to review a book like this, I just truly hated it.

The fact that this book is basically in one sentence does tend to mean, I find, that you have to be in the right 'state of mind' to read it, but once you catch that 'state' and have a few hours to spare at a time (it's not a 'few pages at a time' kind of book) I think people would really enjoy this, the fact I could never finish 'Infinite Jest' by the late David Foster Wallace did make me slightly apprehensive at even starting this book (As I hate NOT finishing a book, whatever it is, I even ploughed through a Mills and Boon three-books-in-one for 'kicks and giggles' once ((yes there is a void in my life)) ) but I thought I'd give it a go, as I do like to 'whomp!' a book on the shelf and think "I've read that!" (that void again), it won't be for everyone, it wasn't for me at some points, I most likely will be wrong but I don't think it will win The Booker Prize, last years Milkman was another 'lack of full stops stream-of-conci-wotsit', I think Last Boat To Tangier will win (AND made into a play((turns out I was wrong, didn't even make the Shortlist!))), just my opinion, but I think it's going to be one of those books that will be around for years, fact.

Don't be put of by the length and the unbroken structure - a thousand pages, and to all intents filled by a single sentence - once you've started and settled in you never want it to end. Wise, funny, astute and utterly human.

My Kindle tells me that Ducks, Newburyport would take 38 hours to read. I gave it two hours of my life that I will never get back.In broad terms, this is stream of consciousness narration. The narrator, an American housewife, shares her every innermost thought just as they happen. This produces long lists, word association streams and the occasional sentence. Oh, and the constant and infernal tic “the fact that”. It was not convincing, it felt contrived, repetitive, boring.I am sure there is a technical skill required to sustain such a voice over so many pages but I couldn’t see the point. I suspect that underneath all the ticcing, digression and trite social observations that there will be a short story. Readers who have persevered with this and reached the end will probably perceive that story to be more profound than it really is because of the effort required to uncover it. But maybe it really is good - I’ll never know.Writers who produce long books have, in my mind, a greater obligation than other writers to justify the claim on readers’ time that their works impose. I would love to hear Lucy Ellmann’s explanation of how she ever thought this work might be worth the time it would take me to read eight shorter, less repetitive, tighter novels.

It's likely that not everyone will appreciate a novel that runs to almost 1,000 pages without a full stop. For me, the length of the book was not an issue, but rather it helped clench my decision to purchase an electronic rather than a paper version of the book. As for its structure - well, I find chapter breaks less useful in an e-book anyway. Plus the fact that a long boo is not necessarily harder to read than a shorter, denser novel.If this - as well as some less positive reviews - has not put you off, then please take the plunge.I'm glad that I did. Ellmann's characters are entirely believable, as is the plot that gradually unfolds. The main (unnamed) character is as real a person as you are ever likely to meet in fiction, defined as she is by the inner monologue that all of us carry on but few ever give expression to. Like all of us, she finds life challenging but also exhilarating. She lives a life circumscribed by family, work and home, yet takes an active interest in the world around her and the views of others - in particular, those she disagrees with. She is very much an introvert, internalising the encounters that cause her stress, anger or embarrassment. I find I can identify with her, and perhaps this is one reason why I find the book so appealing.I agree with other reviewers who suggest that this book needs to be read in longer chunks if possible - like Proust, whose 'A la Recherche du Temps Perdu' I am also reading, a long reading session allows you to immerse yourself in the character and their inner as well as outer experience. But I have also necessarily been found to read this (and Proust) in shorter chunks, and this works too.I am still only a little more than halfway through this book. Already I don't want it to end. Please, Booker judges, don't dismiss this novel on account of its length and structure. I imagine you won't, or it wouldn't have got this far!

This is a wonderful extensive (long) stream of consciousness on the life, during the life, of a young woman, mother of four, professional baker and self professed worrier and coward. As the book progresses the connection between the woman's thoughts and the story of the cougar become more obvious and interlinked. Some of her worries are well founded, others are not- just like life. The strain of reading a huge sentence with no full stops becomes less as the connecting phrase "the fact that" is absorbed unconsciously so that it becomes a punctuation mark. People have compared this novel to Joyce's Ulysses and for me that is fair and I rather think that for me this is the better book, it echoes my life and experience more genuinely, it has very funny moments, a plot and a quite happy ending. I think it should win the Booker prize. It could be the best book I have read for many years