Andrew Martin’s Reviews > Ducks, Newburyport > Status Update

Evidently the narrator was saved from the side of the road by a man named Jesus Lopez Perez. The kids are unimpressed when she shares “Jesus saved me,” but Leo laughs. For as long as she spent stranded, this resolution is… vague. And brief. And a weird jump in time.

“The fact that sometimes I make nutty cinnamon buns for people who DON’T have problems with nuts, the fact that soon they’ll want me to make a sugar- and butter- and flour-free version for people on a diet, and an air-free version for people allergic to air, and a beef-liver-flavored version for pets, but at some point you just have to say “These are the cinnamon rolls that I make.””

Another vignette of the lioness. Here, she meets, loves, and mates with a robust and caring lion, but she eventually grows restless and wants some of her own independence back.

Still stranded. “The fact that Leo loves me, and that comforts me, the fact that that is a constant source of comfort, even when I’m dying of hypothermia… the fact that he says he misses me all the time too, when we’re not together, the fact that his love exists in a world where nobody else gives a hoot about me”

Narrator has been stuck with a flat tire for quite a few pages now. It is 30° in February. She regrets that men won’t stop and help her on the side of the road because they can tell, despite her winter clothes, that she is a middle-aged woman and therefore only “vestigially sexy”. She muses that the men should save her because her pie delivery will save many gorgeous blonde women from starving.

Not sure if we already knew this: The narrator’s oldest daughter is from a relationship with someone called Frank, not the current husband Leo. Plus, a long tangent about the plight of the Abominable Snowman.

The dentist appointment really was for the narrator, not Jake, and at that she had a particularly traumatic time.

It appears that the narrator is now taking her youngest son Jake to the dentist for the first time. She mentions that more snow is on the way and she has many baked good deliveries yet to make.

We get the narrator’s original bakery promo flyer which was humbly attached to a PTA bulletin board and exploded in popularity. The words and Wingdings on the flyer form the shape of a two-layer cake on a stand.

From 170-175, Narrator off-and-on discusses the origin of her home baking business, which has grown to a very time-consuming enterprise without her ever really meaning or believing that it deserved to.