Ducks is an account of the two years Beaton spent (beginning in 2005) working in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada, a far-off planet to which she travelled from her beloved home in Nova Scotia for the sole purpose of paying off her student loans (in these booming wildernesses, the money is too good for a humanities student from a small rural community to refuse).
How do men behave when women are (mostly) not around? Alas, the answer is: not terribly well. Her story, which runs to more than 400 pages, encompasses not only such thorny matters as social class and environmental destruction it may be the best book I have ever read about sexual harassment. But its mood overall is deeply melancholic. Yes, it’s funny at moments Beaton’s low-key wryness is present and correct, and her drawings of people are as charming and as expressive as ever.
K ate Beaton’s new graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, is, I think, going to come as something of a surprise to her fans, for it could hardly be more different in tone from her popular larky strip Hark! A Vagrant, in which she gently sends up historical figures such as Napoleon and Ada Lovelace.
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