‘Surreal immediacy’: how a 1,000-page novel became a 45-hour audiobook

Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport has attracted much attention for its length, but one publisher believes the spoken word might be its perfect mediumFinishing a good book should leave you feeling bereft for a little while, but it’s rare to leave a novel with your brain vibrating at a different frequency. After I finished Lucy Ellmann’s Ducks, Newburyport – a single-sentence stream of consciousness set entirely within the mind of an Ohio housewife – I experienced a comedown. Her unnamed protagonist starts every new thought with “the fact that”, a banal phrase that felt like an exposed secret whenever I spotted it in the wild. Scrolling through examples of the clickbait that litter her thoughts (“Dog Sees Himself On TV And Freaks Out”), absurdist headlines took on a new profundity. When I finished it, I missed her.It’s one thing to read Ellmann’s 1,030-page novel; it’s another to read it aloud. When tiny press Galley Beggar signed Ducks, Newburyport, they didn’t give much thought to an audiobook, says co-founder Sam Jordison. It still didn’t have an audio publisher when it was nominated for the 2019 Booker prize – but as the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) makes all shortlisted titles available to members of its library, it commissioned US actor Stephanie Ellyne to tackle the challenge. Continue reading... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2020-02-28 14:00:18 UTC ]

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