“Ducks, Newburyport” By Lucy Ellmann: Reviews barely mention or totally ignore that first-person narrator of 1020-page Booker-nominated novel is nameless

All I’ve read are six reviews. One review mentioned in passing that the narrator was nameless. The other five ignored it.

I doubt that the protagonist’s namelessness could be accounted for merely because she is the only one talking or thinking. For a person to discuss her interests and relationships for a thousand pages, without her name ever being mentioned, I think would be implausible.

The feature most-noted by reviewers is that, although the novel is 1020 pages long, it consists almost entirely of only one sentence. Why doesn’t the narrator speak in sentences? What is the main reason that people speak in sentences? Like names, sentences facilitate communication with other people.

If the narrator were not a person, and did not normally have conversations with people, she would not need a name or sentences.

So my guess is that the narrator was an alternate personality who was very talkative (as a voice in the author’s head), but did not have conversations, per se, and did not have a name (many alternate personalities don’t).

Search “namelessness” and “nameless” for my discussion of works I’ve actually read.