Wow. I wasn't expecting a light read based simply on the fact that it's set in the Oil Sands, but it still was a gut punch. Living in Wyoming, with its boom and bust economy based heavily on energy resources, I felt a connection to the story even though I've never worked in the field. There's one scene in particular when an Alberta resident gets mad at the transplants who were trash talking the area that really resonated. This book addresses many serious issues, but there are moments of humor.

This is a must purchase for public libraries.

Interesting and well-balanced tale of life in the Canadian Sand-Oil fields. The graphic novel approach allowed for a better sense of both physical and emotional space.

If you've read Kate Beaton's webcomics and webcomic-inspired graphic novels like Hark! A Vagrant, you will not be prepared for this book, which is a very down-to-earth retelling of a period in Beaton's life where she worked at the oil fields of Alberta to make money after college. It is not a light read, and I wouldn't necessary recommend just picking it up on a whim. It's hard hitting and gives you some insight into what life is like for a woman working in an isolated environment with a gender ratio of 50 men to 1 woman. It doesn't purport to be every person's experience, just hers, but in that specificity the reader is drawn into a world that feels both alien and familiar. There is some content in it which may be triggering, but it is not exploitative or graphic, just perhaps a little too real for some.

Beaton's graphic memoir is hard to describe. It's reflective and nuanced, and covers a lot of ground as a personal narrative, as a story about a particular place and time, and as a reflection on much larger issues such as isolation, toxic masculinity, trauma, and (to some extent) Indigenous land rights. She captures some of the most mundane daily experiences so deftly and often with her characteristic sense of humor, while also dealing with emotional, dark, and traumatic moments and their aftermath. The visual style is close to Beaton's previous work, although there's a sparseness that's reinforced by intermittent full-page spreads. I got lost in this book and it laid me out; it's not an easy read, but it's excellent.

As someone who has been following Kate Beaton since the very beginnings of Hark! A Vagrant, this felt like a triumph. I've seen variations of the stories in Ducks on her various social medias for years, but the final product is so heartfelt and tender and conflicted and perfect. She's so good at bookending moments that are absolute gut-punches with her candid humor. There's a frame about three quarters of the way through where her supervisor makes a face that she has drawn EXACTLY like those goofy old comics from Hark! A Vagrant, and it was such a delightful reminder of how far she has come in this industry. Ducks is a beautiful look at a complicated and lonely time in Beaton's life, and I highly, highly recommend it.

Also, she includes a note at the end requesting to not include content warnings in reviews. And I know that even mentioning this is a little bit of a content warning, so I apologize but just please be cautious going into Ducks and know your limits.

This is a stark, epic graphic memoir, and while it was hard to read at times and took me longer to get through than a graphic novel typically would, it was certainly more than worth it. It deals with so much, from the obvious issues of poverty and trauma to environmental degradation and the casual (and concerted) ways that societies perpetuate harms of all kinds. It's not all bleak, though it's certainly much less humorous than Beaton's earlier works.