Ducks, Newburyport

An utterly original novel, longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize in which one woman navigates, through compelling inner monologue, the tension and disquiet of contemporary America.

An Ohio mother bakes pies while the world bombards her with radioactivity and fake facts. She worries about her children, caramelisation, chickens, guns, tardigrades, medical bills, environmental disaster, mystifying confrontations at the supermarket, and the best time to plant nasturtiums.

She regrets most of her past, a million tiny embarrassments, her poverty, the loss of her mother, and the genocide on which the United States was founded.

But in Lucy Ellmann’s scorching indictment of American barbarity comes a plea for kindness. Ducks, Newburyport is a heresy, a wonder, and a revolution in the novel. It is also unforgivably funny.

Author Biography

Lucy Ellmann’s first novel, Sweet Desserts, won the Guardian fiction prize. Her short stories have appeared in magazines, newspapers and anthologies, and she has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Independent, Independent on Sunday, Times Literary Supplement, Telegraph, New Statesman and Society, Spectator, Herald, Scottish Review of Books, Time Out (London), Art Monthly, Thirsty Books, Bookforum, Aeon, Evergreen and Baffler. American by birth, she now lives in Scotland.