Things Are Against Us

Lucy Ellmann

Things Are Against Us
Format
Paperback
Publisher
Text Publishing Co
Country
Australia
Published
2 July 2021
Pages
208
ISBN
9781922458070

Things Are Against Us

Lucy Ellmann

The worst thing about men taking over the cooking of fancy food in restaurants is that every dish now arrives covered in ejaculant, all those drizzles and foam and schmeers…

Things Are Against Us
is the first collection of essays from Booker Prize-shortlisted author Lucy Ellmann. It is everything you might expect from such a fiery writer - which is to say, entirely unexpected. Provocative, smart, angry, wise and very, very funny, the essays in Things Are Against Us cover everything - from feminism to environmental catastrophe; labour strikes to sex strikes; Little House on the Prairie to Donald Trump. Lucy calls for a moratorium on air travel (‘You’d think a global pandemic would be an opportunity to reconsider the whole crazy business’). She rails against bras (‘Men have managed to eroticise bras, but THEY DON’T HAVE TO WEAR THEM’). She gives Agatha Christie short shrift (‘atrocious but ideal for people with colds’). And she pleads for sanity in a world that - well. A world that has spent four years in the company of Donald Trump. (‘That big fat loser of a president, that nasty, sick, terrible, lowly, truly pathetic, reckless, sad, weak, lazy, incompetent, third-rate, clueless, not smart, dumb as a rock, all talk, wacko, fourthrate goofball and all-round low-life’).

Things Are Against Us is electric. It’s vital. These are essays bursting with energy, and reading them feels like sticking your hand in the mains socket. Lucy Ellmann is the writer we need to guide us through these crazy times.

Review

Lucy Ellmann’s most recent novel, Ducks, Newburyport, was nominated for the Booker Prize in 2019. It is over 1000 pages long, has no paragraph breaks and almost no full stops. It is also a compelling, moving and highly original contemporary insight into the mind of a middle-aged mother in the Midwest of America – and I loved every word. Things Are Against Us is Ellmann’s first collection of essays. Combining Ellmann’s newspaper columns and some previously unpublished work, the essay subjects range from climate change to patriarchy, to Little House on the Prairie and Donald Trump. My favourite is the eponymous first essay in which Ellmann rails against all THINGS (the word ‘things’ appears throughout in capital letters). It is funny, sarcastic, playful and self-deprecating, but also provocative and fantastically experimental with language and structure. Ellmann is a master of lists, a seemingly prosaic procession of words builds to a rhythm and poetically creates original insight into how humans are ruining the planet and all of humanity.

Ellmann is best when she is railing against systemic privilege rather than individuals and there are several of Ellmann’s observations that I did not find convincing; a more nuanced discussion of race and class is needed in parts. Interestingly a lot of the same thinking from these essays comes through in Ducks, Newburyport but it lands so much more successfully in a novel with context and character and the time to flesh out ideas and identify their genesis. But if a 1000-plus page novel with no paragraphs breaks doesn’t immediately appeal, start with these essays and if you like Ellmann’s uniquely funny and acerbic style, definitely make the time for Ducks, Newburyport, a remarkable novel from an original mind.


Kara Nicholson is from Readings online.

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