Lucy Ellmann’s Booker Prize-nominated novel, Ducks, Newburyport, is 1,030 pages of stream of consciousness writing narrated by an Ohio housewife—not exactly the kind of book one easily translates into the audio format. Yet actress Stephanie Ellyne was tasked with just that, as Laura Snapes at the Guardian explains. “For 45 hours and 34 minutes, Ellyne reads Ellmann’s text in a calm, bemused voice that recalls Laurie Anderson’s spoken-word work. During recording, she averaged 41 pages per hour, though the work continued away from the microphone. Every night, Ellyne would read and research the following day’s pages, working out how to pronounce the thousands of place names and obscure historical battles in US history. ‘My engineer and I wondered if some of them were fictional, but sure enough, they’re true,’ says Ellyne. ‘The violence in America—all these shootings—isn’t new.'”
Lucy Ellmann’s 45-Hour Audiobook
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Tuesday New Release Day: Woodson; Korkeakivi; DeWitt; Hertmans; Hemmings; McHugh; McInerney
Out this week: Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson; Shining Sea by Anne Korkeakivi; White Nights in Split Town City by Annie DeWitt; War and Turpentine by Stefan Hertmans; How to Party with an Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings; Arrowood by Laura McHugh; and The Glorious Heresies by Lisa McInerney. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2016 Book Preview.
PW Reviews Late American Novel and More
The book I co-edited, The Late American Novel: Writers on the Future of Books, got its Publishers Weekly review this week – a very nice writeup. Also spotted this week, a longer consideration of the book at tumblr Feriatus.
Remember to Tip Your Archivists
Thanks to the work of archivists at The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, two scholars have unearthed a 1901 play by Edith Wharton called “The Shadow of a Doubt,” reports The Guardian. “After all this time, nobody thought there were long, full scale, completed, original, professional works by Wharton still out there that we didn’t know about. But evidently there are. In 2017, Edith Wharton continues to surprise.” Pair with this reflection on the role of New York City in Wharton’s novels.
Helpful Elves
Fact: 4 percent of books are written by secret government agencies, while a full .5 percent are authored by helpful elves. How do we know? The New Yorker said so.
I am looking for some recommendations for enthralling audiobooks with lyrical prose and captivating imagery. I have a proclivity for Magical Realism and dark, surreal fiction. Some of the audiobooks I have particularly enjoyed over the last few years include:
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt
Mr. Splitfoot by Samantha Hunt
A Cosmology of Monsters by Shaun Hamill
Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
Authors that I particularly love are: George Saunders, Haruki Murakami, Aimee Bender, Karen Russell, Kelly Link, Brian Evenson, and Colson Whitehead.
Any suggestions that The Millions community would give would be much appreciated!