Norma’s Comments (group member since Jul 24, 2020)

Norma’s comments from the DUCKS reading support group group.

I didn't mind that it was a kind of artificial steam of consciousness. As the narrator says (somewhere): when this internal monologue stops, I'll be dead.

I did grow weary of the lists and wordplay, though some were brilliant. I haven't read any interviews with the author, but I'm sure the book is as shaped and labored over as any work of fiction.

I did mind how hard it was to find my place if I glanced away from the page.

I won't comment further because I've finished the book--and no spoilers allowed.

When I began the book, I thought I would go mad with every thought beginning with, "the fact is." I wanted to scream. Sometimes the word play, the lists, also maddened me. I wanted to get on with the story. Finding bits of the "plot" hiding amongst the mental monologue became a kind of game. I'm here because no one else I know is willing to read a 988 page book with one sentence, not even when I tell them the sentence is interrupted by short chapters from the point of view of a mountain lion.