We see Kate as one of few lone women working in an isolated, hypermasculine focused environment and all the casual misogyny and resulting oppression that comes with it. Instead, Ducks focuses on going to a more personal, and frankly, upsetting place. Beaton does touch on this further towards the end of the book, but not as much as I had expected. Prior to reading this book, I had assumed it was going to be more focused on what Kate witnessed in terms of the horrifying environmental impacts of the Oil Sands – some of you may be more familiar with the term ‘Tar Sands’. How well can you remember the exact, entire cast of characters from your life nearly 20 years ago? Ultimately, I felt this was less of a bug and more of a feature, because it gives the book an ethereal memory-like quality.

Even with helpful character guides placed strategically throughout the book, I found it hard to keep track of who was who. It is a whirlwind of a memoir, taking place across several different Oil Fields that Kate works at over two years, with lots of characters – mostly men (more on that in a minute) – weaving in and out of the narrative quite quickly.

It follows Kate’s life post-college as she makes the difficult decision to move to the oil sands of Northern Alberta, taking up a post in a tool crib for an industrial Oil Field in order to pay down her student loans. Its subject matter is altogether more serious, and more personal. While it shares the simple, charming style of Beaton’s Hark! A Vagrant art. It was a stellar cavalcade of history, literature, pop-culture and absurdism that was always a delight to read.ĭucks is different. She’s best known as the writer and artist behind the webcomic Hark! A Vagrant, which stopped publishing in 2018, but was responsible for gifting us with Shetland Pony Adventures and the line “What if your wife orbits my dick”.

Kate Beaton and I have never met.īut Kate Beaton has been a parasocial part of my life for quite a while.

Second Warning – These spoilers can also be triggers, specifically regarding sexual assault.

How you can classify someone’s life events as ‘spoilers’, I don’t rightly know.

Warning – From this point on, this review discusses spoilers from the book.

Ducks oil sands