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frasersimons 's review for:
Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands
by Kate Beaton
3.5 rounded up, because I think the meat of the content here is good: A woman speaking up about her experience at two different camps over the course of two years. And Fort Mac, though I’ve only worked in the city itself, is exactly like that, and I’ve hired and interacted with plenty of men who worked those jobs for a number of years, and yeah, all the ones I’ve hired were like that, so there’s that.
My main issues with this are simply structural. There’s no sense of time whatsoever, as most of it is 1-4 page vignettes of scenes she remembers while there. Interspersed are some exposition heavy dialogue conversations where the only interiority she has is voiced, as there’s no other means of delivering it used—a fad in comics I am baffled with (by all means, get rid of thought bubbles, but what about just any interiority with captioning at the top? Why is that out? I don’t get it)—it makes the dialogue feel incredibly stilted and jarring, because everything else is slice-of-life, verisimilitude interactions and memories.
There is a linear progression of the story because it’s two years at the job with a break in between. Yet, when she’s actually on the job there’s just these completely random scenes with no transitioning. There isn’t even really time to process a heavy conversation or interaction, before there’s a new completely different thing occurring on the next page, and you’re resetting time and place and characters.
Maybe it’s the actual style, as I haven’t read many graphic memories or comics like these, in particular? But it just felt like it lacked a lot of cohesion and a lot of interiority you’d expect from any other kind of memoir. It’s just: This Happened. And another this happened. Perhaps it’s so revelatory for others because they don’t know about the oil sands or hyper masculine dominated spaces, or assume Canada is amazing and none of these things take place, still on a daily occurrence, because we refuse to hold oil, but really all big Corp to any accountability here, but to someone familiar with these things, I was left wanting more. Perhaps the high acclaim gave me higher expectations as well?
My main issues with this are simply structural. There’s no sense of time whatsoever, as most of it is 1-4 page vignettes of scenes she remembers while there. Interspersed are some exposition heavy dialogue conversations where the only interiority she has is voiced, as there’s no other means of delivering it used—a fad in comics I am baffled with (by all means, get rid of thought bubbles, but what about just any interiority with captioning at the top? Why is that out? I don’t get it)—it makes the dialogue feel incredibly stilted and jarring, because everything else is slice-of-life, verisimilitude interactions and memories.
There is a linear progression of the story because it’s two years at the job with a break in between. Yet, when she’s actually on the job there’s just these completely random scenes with no transitioning. There isn’t even really time to process a heavy conversation or interaction, before there’s a new completely different thing occurring on the next page, and you’re resetting time and place and characters.
Maybe it’s the actual style, as I haven’t read many graphic memories or comics like these, in particular? But it just felt like it lacked a lot of cohesion and a lot of interiority you’d expect from any other kind of memoir. It’s just: This Happened. And another this happened. Perhaps it’s so revelatory for others because they don’t know about the oil sands or hyper masculine dominated spaces, or assume Canada is amazing and none of these things take place, still on a daily occurrence, because we refuse to hold oil, but really all big Corp to any accountability here, but to someone familiar with these things, I was left wanting more. Perhaps the high acclaim gave me higher expectations as well?