Ducks, Newburyport
LUCY ELLMANN
(GALLEY BEGGAR PRESS, 1,040 PP, £14.99)
Tablet bookshop price £13.49 • tel 020 7799 4064

This is one of the most bonkers, but absolutely brilliant, novels I have ever read. It unspools over more than 1,000 closely-typed pages, with scarcely any full stops or paragraph breaks, and largely consists of a stream-of-consciousness narrative that is by turns poignant, funny, repetitive, poetic, banal and wise. The reader is largely placed in the head of a middle-aged housewife in Ohio, as she recovers from cancer, worries about her children and bakes pies. Every so often, a shorter section of writing interrupts these ruminations, given from the perspective of an endangered mountain lion.

This book demands plenty of time from its reader. Each page features lengthy digressions, abbreviations to unpack and creative non sequiturs. Such features will make some readers baulk. Nonetheless, others – and I count myself among them – will find this approach audacious and compelling.