The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx
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Book Reviews of The Shipping News
Book Review: Dark Compelling Voyage of a Soul
Summary: 5 Stars
Not to be confused with the Chamber of Commerce endorsed vision of Newfoundland. In this dark, but very compelling voyage, Annie Proulx introduces us to an ordinary man, the hulking, clueless news reporter, the unfavorite son, the ever unlucky Quoyle. Quoyle's very bad marriage ends with the always faithless wife Petal having sold their two young daughters. Petal and the man she is running with are killed in a horrific crash. After locating his daughters, Quoyle seeks a very different life. Returning with his aunt to the old homestead in Newfoundland, Quoyle tries to settle his family into a very peculiar landscape. Rebuilding their lives after too many mistakes and blunders, he finds his niche writing The Shipping News column for an eccentric tabloid of a newspaper. The constant threat and beauty of the sea pounds the shores of the generational struggle to sustain life and to find meaning. Grim, gritty, occasionally brutal scenes are bluntly and courageously and quite elegantly written. With an ocean full of secrets and dread, ghosts are easily awakened. Child molestation, incest, grizzly car and boat accidents - nothing is glossed over. Long brutal winters, the uneasy alliance with government and maritime authorities, a party gone terribly awry, and murder on a Hitler yacht - still the focus is on the simple good life of a man who loves and cares for his family. The recorded version rather wonderfully captures the right tones, the despair of a cruel life, the desolation of the landscape and the nuances of dialogue and setting in a way that the reader/listener feels like they are poised on the windowsill of the these lives, as we listen to this lengthy story (11 CDs). The author won a Pulitzer prize for this piece of writing, it is not an easy or a gentle read, but is certainly a captivating and intense and an opportunity to see how lives can change. I am very now anxious to see if the movie does justice to the story.
Book Review: The best effort by one of our most skilled novelists.
Summary: 5 Stars
Simply one of the 10 best novels of the last decade. While I liked but did not love 'Accordian Crimes' and 'Postcards', 'The Shipping News' stands out as the finest effort of one of our best novelists. The story of a perpetual loser who finally finds his place in the world (in one of the continent's least hospitable places), the novel is at its best when it places the reader upon the desolate rockfaces of Newfoundland, a region that tends to kill the human spirit when it's not putting them in an early grave. With the spectre of being drowned, frozen to death, or sucked under by doomed legacy of his own ancestors, Quoyle struggles mightily to anchor himself and his family in an environment that is alternately threatening and welcoming and, above all, gives him a chance to start over. The characters are solid and memorable, the plot is well-structured, and the writing sharp and often startling in its precision and poetry. The dialogue is a joy to read, particularly the completely unsentimental characterization of two children as they respond to adult-sized tragedies and joys.
Particularly impressive is the way Proulx is able to so economically sketch a place or time or character in a way that hints at greater depths and scopes (the political and economic complexities of the Newfoundland oil and fishing industries, the gossipy confines of small offices and family-run businesses, the spontaneous adventures of a far-away couple that Quoyle barely knows). One particular scene is truly stunning and emblematic of Proulx's skill (spoiler warning) - a going-away party that slowly morphs into an orgy of destruction. Here, Proulx portrays a senseless act that is unpredictable and shocking, yet consistent with the desperation of a remote outpost to maintain human contact as it simultaneously destroys the thing it loves. Like the book itself, this scene follows the theme of destruction and regeneration in surprising and unforeseen ways.
Book Review: Style, Real Characters, A New Favorite
Summary: 5 Stars
Quoyle is a fat lout widower, a doormat failure in the states who finds himself moving into a new life with his aunt and two kids, Bunny and Sunshine. They escape to an old, catawampus, weathered, house across the bay from freezing Killick-Claw, Newfoundland, of all places. Populated with sea faring folks, the people know boats, they remember fishing tales, they have cried over way too many boat wrecks & drownings on its rocky, iceberg infested inlets and coves. Quoyle finds a job, writing a column at the town's paper, Gammy Bird, tabulating the big ships that are off-loading their goods. Reporters at the paper, with names like Tert Card (Editor), Nutbeem, Billy Pretty, Jack Buggit (owner) each have their moment on stage to tell a yarn of pirates, ghosts in the fog, scary, deadly Quoyles of the old days. (Annie Proulx is a master of her craft, displayed beautifully in these tales.) At the local greasy-spoon, work-mates offer Quoyle advice and cussing outs. Quoyle (he must have a first name) mismanages almost everything except his love for his two girls.
Proulx makes characters who will soon inhabit your mind. Her sentences lack verbs; others lack subjects, prepositions. Yet there's not a false note in it. It's a lean kind of writing like I've never seen before, but is easily understood, probably, because it's the messed-up kind of sentences with jump-ahead thinking Quoyle would use.
If you're looking for a straight-line, fast-paced, hero-driven story, with gun-fire every minute, you better skip this one. If you savor award-winning prose, fabulous, quirky, but believable characters, if you love to learn of fog-shrouded places you'd never visit, want to get deep into the heart of people who seem more real than your own family, try this one and get blown away.
Book Review: The Stranglehold
Summary: 5 Stars
At first description, Quoyle may seem an unlikely central character to develop a novel around; he is large, ungainly, and he is taken in easily. The story of his life has been that of an uncomfortable observer, hiding his jutting chin behind his hand, hoping not to be noticed. That all changes when his life turns upside down and tragedy finds him traveling back to Newfoundland, the land his family left before he was born. And throughout the course of "The Shipping News", E. Annie Proulx makes Quoyle an admirable narrator, a just observer of those around him and the life he is beginning to understand.
Proulx's writing flows effortlessly off of the page - at times lyric, sometimes clipped, but always magnetic and evocative. Her descriptions of life in Newfoundland drift between the stagnancy of a dying way of life and the overwhelming brutality and beauty of the sea that surrounds the characters within her story. When Quoyle arrives with his two small daughters and his long-unknown aunt, he takes up a job at the local paper writing the shipping news. He is described as having no skill for writing, but soon finds his voice and comically sees his entire life in headlines.
As Quoyle continues to adjust to life in Newfoundland, he sees that coming home isn't only about the future - but about putting the past and the personal demons that haunt him (as well as those of his aunt) to rest. It is a meandering journey over the course of the novel to find Quoyle come to terms with himself and what he wants in life, and to loose the grip that his two-timing wife had one his heart. "The Shipping News" is an original, almost elegiac, testament to the power of family, of love, and of the influence that a place can have over a person.
Book Review: Well-Deserved Pulitzer Winner
Summary: 5 Stars
The first time I tried to read this book, it was a little hard to get into. The second time, I read all the way through in just a couple of days. Proulx's descriptions of the Newfoundland scenery and fishing made me want to visit just to see the beauty. Her love of the land comes through in her characters' attachment to the land. The place we come from makes a profound difference in our identity. In order to get a full picture of our identity we must explore that aspect of ourselves. This is a common theme in postmodern literature, but Proulx puts a different twist on the theme by choosing to write about Newfoundland--not a typical place for average people to be exploring their roots. By choosing a land that means a lot to her, she opens the way for others to connect with their own little pocket of the world.
The importance of place is evident in Quoyle's transformation from a quiet, useless, bumbling fool into a competant, strong, admirable character. In the beginning, before he goes back to Newfoundland, you can see indications that he could become strong. He is a devoted friend, father, and even husband in the face of his wife's infidelity. When he moves back to his birthplace and connects with his past, his strength becomes more active. He is not only able to overcome his own past, but he is also able to be a good father and to help Wavey to heal from her past.
I strongly disagree with the reviewers that say this book does not have a good story. I was drawn in by the events in Killick-Claw. I did not find the sentance fragments distracting in the least. They created a great sense of character--especially for a simple character like Quoyle. This book is a masterpiece.