Ducks, Newburyport

An unnamed woman in Ohio runs a small pie-baking business, looks after her four unruly children and her husband Leo, a civil engineer, and worries. As she rolls pastry, drives deliveries and once gets a flat tyre, her mind pours on, mostly in one long sentence of clauses beginning 'the fact that': her dead parents, her children's safety, African elephants, the bedroom habits of happy couples, gun violence, the Flint water crisis, the Trump presidency, what to do with a wood pigeon's egg left in the nest. Between her thoughts runs another story, of a lioness who has lost her cubs and goes looking for them. From this flood of trivia and fear emerges a portrait of a mother fiercely guarding her family in a hostile country.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Genres

Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

United States

First published

2019

Author's age

63 when first published

ISBN

9781910296967 (Galley Beggar Press, United Kingdom)

9781771963077 (Biblioasis, Canada)

More

Wikidata