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	Shipping News : A Novel (Scribner Classics) Annie Proulx Scribner, 1999 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 447 reviews view larger image
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A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.

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Good News

This is the story about a man named Quoyle, an ugly giant of a man, a loser who grows on you like a dull landscape. At the beginning of the novel, he is without plan, without talent, and without the good sense to notice. A lumbering, large-chinned, clumsy loner, Quoyle decides on the death of his beloved yet wayward wife that something has to change. He leaves New York State with his two young daughters and his aunt for his ancestral home of Newfoundland.

I won't go on about the plot here because it just doesn't sound like very much, and such a description wouldn't get anyone but Newfoundlanders to read the thing anyway. The title of the novel refers to a weekly column that Quoyle ends up writing for a small newspaper in the coastal town of Killick-Claw. Initially, the column is simply a roster of vessels currently entering, moored in, or sailing from the harbor, but soon Quoyle, a man with a lifelong fear of water, begins writing about the boats themselves. The column doesn't so much play a central role in the novel as offer a metaphor for the novel. Each of the many and memorable characters sails into the story-line at some point and then is slowly revealed as a person beset by fears or by some dark secret and who tries to overcome them or at least live with them.

When I began reading the novel, I was distracted by the author's use of sentence fragments. For instance, one chapter begins: "The aunt in her woolen coat when Quoyle came into the motel room. Tin profile in a glass eye. A bundle on the floor under the window. Wrapped in a bed sheet, tied with net twine." My first reaction to such a passage is, "Excuse me? Would you mind running that past me again?" Call me a linguistically traditional old fart, but to me sentences have a certain completeness about them that can make even individual ones a joy to read. Granted, clipped sentences can add a certain immediacy to narration and can be used in juxtaposition to complete sentences to stylistically distinguish between, say, description and stream of consciousness. It took me quite a few pages to get over my distaste for the author's reliance on fragments, and eventually even I found myself deeply drawn into the novel and appreciative of Proulx's writing.

Proulx won the 1994 Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for fiction as well as a couple of international awards thrown in for good measure, so one more positive review from me shouldn't come as a surprise. What I find sets this novel apart from many others I have read recently is the substance as opposed to simply the style of the story. An acquaintance once said that no one under forty could possibly write an interesting novel, a comment that I resented at the time, having been in my twenties, and still don't assent to. I would, however, certainly agree that experience is a powerful tool for a writer, and, as is evident throughout The Shipping News, it is a tool which Proulx, 56 years old on the release of her first novel, applies masterfully. Few characters in the book could be described as exotic, but each character seems real, unique, and deeply human. Their quiet lives are revealed with patience and compassionate good humor.

I highly recommend this book.

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Perfect

I have found the best in art is not so easy, but the rewards of struggle and occasional victory can be life altering. Every single page of To Kill a Mockingbird tells of some enduring truth; I caught a glimpse of what I can only call God in The Color Purple. For me, The Shipping News is in that same strange space, that mortals such as myself only rarely glimpse. As high and cold as the stars or the bottom of the sea, out on a frozen rock in the middle of nowhere, M Proulx gives us a Quoyle, thereby giving us ourselves.


Sequel please

You need to have repose when you read this book so you can remember the details. Don't listen to it while driving a car and eating a sandwich and yelling at your dog in the back seat. I loved everything about it. Proulx admits to being a geographical determinist and Newfoundland reflects the characters of this story perfectly. The characters all blossom there in the harsh surroundings. Bunny changes. Quoyle changes and becomes a happy man. All the details are so perfect. Proulx is America's Gabriel Garcia Marquez on a mini-scale. I do wish she would write more books like this one. The names of the characters are so Dickens-like. I do not want to see the movie. I don't want Aunt to be Judi Dench and Quoyle to be Kevin Spacey. I want him to be a young Gérard Depardieu. PS. The film was a boring disappointment. Spacey and Moore did well with their roles but the story was too altered and most disappointing of all was the lack of Newfoundland scenery.

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Wonderful Writing

I picked this book up years ago, when it first came out, and read the first few pages. But it always felt choppy to me, the short sentences (many of them fragments), and the storyline just seemed depressing. But a friend recently told me to give it another chance, and I'm so very glad I did. The short sentences grow on you, in the way Cormac McCarthy's sentences do, and soon it feels completely natural. And the storyline is compelling.

Although Quoyle at first seems pathetic, making mistakes at every turn, you soon see how very brave he is, strong enough to overcome the hardships of living in Newfoundland, starting a new life with his aunt and daughters. Both his character and the aunt's (I don't think she's ever named) are extremely well done. The short turns of phrase he uses to describe even the minor characters help you see all of them almost instantly. So after avoiding Proulx for a decade, I'm now suffering Proulx withdrawal, and I'm off to buy Postcards and Accordian Crimes. I can't wait!

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

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