Ducks, Newburyport

Lucy Ellmann's seventh novel is a single sentence of over a thousand pages, following the relentless free-association of an Ohio housewife and amateur baker as she processes the contemporary United States — its food culture, political paranoia, ecological dread, and domestic routine — interspersed with a counterpoint narration of a mountain lioness. The novel won the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction, the Goldsmiths Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize.