Aaron’s Reviews > Ducks, Newburyport > Status Update

The unique sadness you feel as a small child is so intense and horrible, especially when it results in ruminating over a misunderstanding. Ellmann recreates this masterfully here with her ebb and flow that construct a life so mysteriously that we only see pieces moving by. Pieces passing us by; however, when we glance back we see something fully constructed.

“… at the center of the vortex is always mommy,” pg. 485

Ellmann is really getting to me at this point. I am getting pretty sad reading this and I’m pissed that I have work to do the next couple days because I really would just like to sit down and bang out the remaining half of this.

"Hers was a life of resentments, suspicions and alarms. She had her satisfactions though: an opposum swinging upside down from a high branch, the whoop of an owl, indicating dusk and the time to hunt, the sight of a dead sheep's face, surrounded by tight woolen curls, a sip of clear crow water, nibble of grass, large white snowflakes disappearing into a black pond. And now, her infants asleep in the den." (297)

Found “thicc” and “fiddledeedee” in here

She’s said the title twice now…. But what does it mean??!!

“tartes tatin, hog maw, plumber’s wrench, window sill”