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    The Shipping News
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    The Shipping News
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    The Shipping News
    Ebook439 pages8 hours

    The Shipping News

    By Annie Proulx

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    Annie Proulx’s highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

    Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers – the remotest corner of far-flung Newfoundland. With ‘the aunt’ and his delinquent daughters – Bunny and Sunshine – in tow, Quoyle finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. ‘The Shipping News’ is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins UK
    Release dateJun 28, 2012
    ISBN9780007386819
    Author

    Annie Proulx

    Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novel The Shipping News, Barkskins and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. She lives in New Hampshire.

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    Reviews for The Shipping News

    4/5

    139 ratings114 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I think it takes nerve to give your book the title The Shipping News.The shipping news is that dull stuff in the agate type in the last section of the paper that nobody reads -- right?LA PALOMA IN FROM HONG KONG - Captain Jacoby, MasterBut this The Shipping News is that rarity - prize winning book that deserved all the plated tin people threw at it.Quoyle is a half baked sort of journalist in upstate New York with two young kids and a wife who runs around. In a heart stopping tragedy, the wife is killed and Quoyle (pronounced like "Coil") is scooped up by a distant relative aunt and they move up to a rough and lonely part of Newfoundland.And that's when the wind starts whispering in the sails of this graceful little book.The house they move into is a storm tossed ruin, the people are sometimes soft as a sea-breeze friendly and sometimes cruel and dark and violent as the sea.And our Quoyle pulls up his sea boots and learns what he's capable of and finds a place in the community and learns his way in the sea. And the girls learn too. Even the aunt has her story to tell.Wonderful rich complex writing - you will be looking up a lot of words that are local argot or archaic or just the writer telling her tale. Just go with it.The Newfoundland coast is as much a character as any flesh and body person in the book.Read for a book group - and I loved it
    • 5/5
      Excellent novel with a great story, very evocative
    • 4/5
      It took me ages to finish this book, and in hindsight I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps because Quoyle is such an antihero that it's hard to take him seriously, especially at the beginning when he's drowning in grief over the death of his bitch of a wife. Additionally, Proulx's uncommon, fragmented writing style was something I had to get used to.Once Quoyle, his daughters and his aunt had finally settled in their ancestral home at Newfoundland's coast and I had settled into the voice of the prose, I gradually fell in love. With the characters, each of them quirky, rough-edged personalities swaying between tragedy and hilariousness, and with the landscape which is almost a character in itself - rough, dangerous and deadly, but at the same time providing its inhabitants with everything they need for their survival.Over the course of this story, Quoyle settles into his new life; what has started as an escape from the failure that his life in the US was becomes the beginning of something new. And in the end, I had - like Quoyle - the feeling that I had found a family in this little village.
    • 3/5
      What's It About?Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a “head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips,” is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle’s Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family’s unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives.What Did I Think?I didn't really care for the characters at all. They can best be described as quirky, flawed, and at bottom of the "food chain" when it comes to human beings. After a time they do begin to grow on you. This is not a fast read by any means and some of the boating terms completely went over my head. In spite of that I found myself wanting to know how Quoyle would deal with the next challenge life tossed him. What I did immensely enjoy was the author's details of the landscape and the character of the people that inhabited it....something I generally don't pay a great deal of attention to. Anyone looking for just excitement in a book will probably want to skip this one
    • 5/5
      Stunning book.
    • 5/5
      Gorgeous poetic prose. Love it.
    • 3/5
      Well, this was a quirky book, in my opinion.
      Maybe why I liked it - bleak bleak bleak - but that house seemed to have personality and so trailer trashy, yet hope amidst the despair.
      Saw the movie after reading the book and that tied it all up nicely for me.
      It's an ok read.
      Read in 2004.
    • 3/5
      All right, this book wasn't bad, but I found it incredibly boring. It's about pretty normal people living pretty normal lives in Newfoundland, which is not normal to me so learning about that was the most interesting part.
    • 4/5
      Wonderful, poetic and mesmerizing. I'm not sure how to properly categorize it, and yet I can't resist the temptation to try: it's a middle-age coming of age-story, A travelogue of Newfoundland, a reflection on the progress of our modern age and it's influence on society, all roled up in one. And it's about the sea, of course, and the people who make o living from it and are dependent on it. And love it in their way. Proulx somehow pulls of letting the chacters be theese tall-tale eccentric local figures, while at the same time giving them all rich personalities and believable faces.I've never lived on the coast of Newfoundland, so I'm not in any position to comment on realism, but to me it feels genuine and true - sympathetic, yet unflinching, and never condescending or sentimental about the "old ways" ant it'sabout poverty, isolation, hardship, and helplessness.I liked it much more than I thought I would.
    • 4/5
      This was a good read. I liked the story and the writing style was interestingly different, although it did take a bit to get used to. I like how the author gently ties the strings of his life together, instead of beating you in the face with the "message" over and over. It's subtle and enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      one of Zada's favorites, I liked it but didn't love it. Maybe just not in the right mood for it.
    • 1/5
      So dark, depressing and bleak I could not get very far into this book. No matter how many times people told me it has a happy ending, my feeling is that it's not worth the slog.
    • 5/5
      reread, listening to Paul Hecht's fine audiobook. It was a treasure the first time, and equally so this time.
    • 4/5
      “The house was heavy around him, the pressure of the past filling the rooms like odourless gas.”Quoyle, a newspaper reporter from New York state moves to Newfoundland to escape after his promiscuous wife Petal has died in a car accident with his two young daughters an aunt who wants to return to the place of her birth. Quoyle's gets a newspaper job in with the local paper in Killick-Claw run by four crusty characters, most of them old fishermen and known for its sensational news stories. Quoyle is given the job of covering the shipping news and perhaps cruelly car wreck stories, the latter of which incites terror in Quoyle, reminding him of Petal's fate. Quoyle, his aunt and daughters start to rebuild their ancestral home, long left abandoned, and lives as the Newfoundland seasons change from fine summers days to violent devastating winter storms all the while Quoyle's family history is slowly being unravelled. Quoyle's ancestors have a nefarious reputation as murderers and pirates. Meanwhile, the modern world seems to be encroaching on Newfoundland. Massive factory ships are replacing small, local fishing operations; oil tankers and oil spills abound, ruining what few natural resources are left.In many respects this is a story of hope, of rebuilding lives after difficult childhoods and traumatic events as an adult but it is done against a background of a town that over reliant on fishing is slowly dying mainly through the influences from the outside world, either because quotas and lower fish stocks mean making a living out of fishing is virtually impossible or because youngsters are leaving the area for better jobs and life chances elsewhere. This is encapsulated by a young seamstress who despite having a university education is applying to a minimum of 20 jobs every week in any industry just to escape the place. Whilst those who can afford to escape the Newfoundland winters to warmer climes. This is not just a Canadian thing but can be seen in communities across the world where youngsters are deserting the beautiful but at times bleak countryside for the bigger cities in search for work and opportunities. This is beautifully written and is at times very atmospheric in depiction but there are lighter more comical elements as well to break the mood. Overall a very enjoyable read.
    • 5/5
      Well told story. Cold, wind, storm, death - these are not what I look for in a novel. But Proulx does her work so well that I'm drawn in. The book is cleverly structured around stories of boats, seamanship and especially knots, which add depth and interest.
    • 5/5
      There are a lot of good things I could say about this book: the sense of a seaside hamlet community, which the author conveys in layers, as she presents everything else; the changing seasons (and living through them); the changing world, for the worse, mainly, but the resilience of those who adapt to it; the exotic and often dangerous realities, in a wild but at the same time amenable place. But above all, the portrait of its characters, a piece at a time, with each given his or her due.
    • 5/5
      Clearly people either hate this book because it has a very gently flowing plot, which is really more of a visit with some people than a story with a traditional plot line, or they absolutely adore it. I'm in the second category. Beautiful writing with brilliant and perceptively-written characters. I will certainly be reading more Annie Proulx.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this book up but I was pleasantly surprised. The author has an interesting writing style where she uses a lot of short sentences to keep the book moving along. It could get a bit overwhelming at time with the amount of fishing and/or Newfoundland slang and technical terms but I persevered and thought it was worth it. One criticism is that the main characters first name is never revealed. It's always "Quoyle" or "the Nephew" or some such. A minor flaw but like an annoying itch. All up it's definitely worth reading.
    • 2/5
      I don't really like Proulx's terse writing style, but it's a perfect match for this story and setting.
    • 5/5
      unforgettable characters..and insightful chapter openings...her best work..
    • 5/5
      “Omaloor Bay is called after Quoyles. Loonies. They was wild and inbred, half-wits and murderers. Half of them was low-minded.” (162)Annie Proulx Rocks. Pun Intended. Quoyle, protagonist of The Shipping News and known only by his surname, is a huge, miserable lug of a man, a failure-extraordinaire, excoriated by his family and cheated on by his wife. Middle-aged and father of two young daughters, Bunny and Sunshine, he agrees to move with his aunt, Agnis Hamm, back to the land of his roots: Newfoundland. Killick-Claw proves to be his silver lining. He lands a job at a quirky, local newspaper, Gammy Bird, where writes a weekly column, “The Shipping News.” (Part of his charm, the paper owner assures him, is that he doesn’t have a clue what he is talking about). Quoyle settles in, and one new experience follows another: he makes some steadfast friends; experiences some adventure on the high seas; and is in danger of coming of age when he is attracted to local widow, Wavey Prowse.The Shipping News is a story of Newfoundland and of its people: an isolated, wild, untamable place, populated by characters who are quirky as hell, tough as nails, and salt of the earth. By extension, it is also a story of the sea, glassy and murderous in equal parts. Proulx excels at bringing both place and character to the page. She introduces us to Killick-Claw’s harbormaster, identifying him first by physical appearance, and then by place, as he recalls a storm at sea:__________ “Diddy Shovel’s skin was like asphalt, fissured and cracked, thickened by a lifetime of weather, the scurf of age. Stubble worked through the craquelured surface. His eyelids collapsed in protective folds at the outer corners. Bristled eyebrows; enlarged pores gave the nose a sandy appearance. Jacket split at the shoulder seams.” (79)“It never leaves you. You never hear the wind after that without you remember that banshee moan, remember the watery mountains, crests torn into foam, the poor ship groaning. Bad enough at any time, but this was the deep of winter and the cold was terrible, the ice formed on rail and rigging until vessels was carrying thousands of pounds of ice. The snow drove so hard it was just a roar of white outside these windows. Couldn’t see the street below. The sides of the houses to the northwest was plastered a foot thick with snow as hard as steel.” (83)__________I think I’ve already made it obvious, but Proulx is genius. Her writing and her tone throughout capture both Newfoundland and its inhabitants beautifully, her sense of place and of character brilliant. Nor does she shy away from political comment, addressing head-on the longstanding economic strife of resource-rich Newfoundland, created in large(st) part by politics and politicians – “those twits in Ottawa.” (285) This is a book I’ve had on my shelf for years that I kept meaning to get to – I’m glad “later” finally arrived. Highly recommended.“All the complex wires of life were stripped out and he could see the structure of life. Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of humans and animals against them for a brief time.” (196)
    • 3/5
      This novel was recommended to me by a friend who said I would love it. It starts off on a depressing note, which made me wonder why she liked the book. Not having anything else to read at the moment, I persevered and was pleasantly surprised at how the plot suddenly took an upswing and became very enjoyable. The story is about a man who seems to have nothing going for him and how he keeps plodding along to make a place for himself in the world where he can be happy and contribute.
    • 5/5
      I've been meaning to read this book for a long time, but just didn't get around to it until now. I must say that the book was totally unexpected. This is a book to be savoured and enjoyed. This is a book that is to be marvelled at. This is a real story about real people and real experiences. I know the book is fiction, and the characters are not real, but Ms. Proulx makes them all so realistic and believable. I loved every single one of the characters in the book. I loved the setting - a rocky coastline in Newfoundland. And I think that these characters depict so clearly the toughness and resiliance of the people who actually live in Newfoundland. The fishermen, the boat builders, the small town newspapermen, the tough and reslient women - all are depicted here in this book. The main character who we know a Quoyle undergoes a metamorhisis when he returns to his ancestral home with his aunt and his two young daughers. He was escaping his life in the States and trying to start fresh after his wife was killed in an automobile accident. Little did he realize that his anscestral home would welcome him back with open arms. He finds a life here that is totally different than anything he has experienced before. This book is so lovely. We see the stark beauty of Newfoundland and it's constant love/hate relationship with the weather. We see the warmth of people who all know that they are in this all together, and no one is really alone. The book is warm, funny, sad, melancholy and magical. A true Canadian masterpiece and a well-deserving winnner of the Pulitzer Prize.
    • 4/5
      I started out not liking the writing style of this book at all. This is the first Proulx book I’ve read, but if her other books are written in the same style, she is the queen of both the sentence fragment and the comma splice. I get that some of the sentences were supposed to be news headlines, and I found that to be clever. However, not all of them were and it truly was like fingers on a chalkboard to me. After a few chapters, though, I found the storyline very compelling. The characters were well drawn, and I was sympathetic to their life situations. I discovered that I wanted to keep reading so I could learn what happened to them.Quoyle and his family go from the States back to Newfoundland, which is where his father was originally from. Everyone there knows about the Quoyles and it isn’t all good. Quoyle is a kind man, but a bit of a bumbler, or so he thinks. He has a job at the local newspaper writing about car wrecks and the shipping news. (I could have done without the detailed newspaper reports of the s*x abu se cases.) He takes care of his little girls, Bunny and Sunshine, as well as his aunt. Or is his aunt taking care of him? (I was fascinated by her character, especially the certain incident with the outhouse!) All in all, it’s an engaging domestic drama taking place in a freezing, unforgiving climate.In the end, I still didn’t like the writing style, but I did enjoy reading about this family and Newfoundland. I’m now looking forward to viewing the movie adaptation.
    • 4/5
      I didn't expect to like this book, as I had read one of her collections of short stories and didn't care for it. So it was a pleasant surprise to like the characters, to sympathize with their struggles, and to root for the main character to recognize real love and to be happy.
    • 4/5
      What is it about people who can’t articulate themselves very well making such good characters in novels? In this one, Quoyle is a hopeless case who may as well have Asperger’s Syndrome, he seems so doomed to failure in his relationships. He is rescued by his aunt (who has an interesting past all of her own) and his move to his ancestral home in Newfoundland. I was reminded of all the Newfie jokes I’ve ever heard through the years (yes, the inbreeding stories abound here, too), but I loved this story of how one man comes to understand who he is, and how to find love in a harsh environment. Like all Proulx novels, it’s quirky and comical, but this is the best Proulx novel of the lot.
    • 5/5
      Proulx's "happy book." A pretty amazing journey of one buffoon into character and laughter.
    • 4/5
      Beautiful writing and descriptions of the Maine boating life. Loved some of the imagery with the house and the personalities of the town.
    • 3/5
      What an odd book. Proulx is a stylist of the highest order. Some of her sentences fairly dance off the page. But in the end, what do they say? I include this book in my library on style alone, but all else is strange, inconclusive, and eventually pointless. Actually, after a bit, as I kept hoping to become involved with her characters and their plight (which is the whole purpose behind writing a book), I began to find the clever clever language too damn clever. Hmmmm. I think I can sum up a Proulx book in one word: exhausting.
    • 5/5
      Wonderful story of hope and love against a harsh background. Romantic and rugged. Tender and terrible all at once. I found the prose to be very suited to this story.