Picked this book for my award winners challenge and solely for this challenge I came to know about this book. I am glad that I put these challenges for me and because of them I am reading all these different books. Some proved to be disaster, others just made me fall in love with themselves. This book is somewhere in between. Neither I hated nor I loved it.

The Shipping News revolve around Quoyle who had a tough childhood and equally tough twenties. After the death of his wife he moved back to Newfoundland, Canada, his original home. There he changed himself into a responsible father, and a person people look up to when they think that they are in need of help and this person will never disappoint them.

I really loved the transformation part. How Quoyle started connecting with the people in this small coastal town. His friendship with Dennis, friction and loyalty at his office with colleagues, all was described in a lively manner. Beside that language was really beautiful.

But the two things that i didn't like about it and which also made me remove two stars from my rating 1) the parts about fishing and boating lessons and how one could be perfect in them, 2) the end was not what i expected. While first put me to sleep, in second i was most disappointed. It fell a little too short of my expectations.

I just fell in love with the writing so I am definitely reading another book by Annie Proulx.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx won the Pulitzer Prize back in 1994 and I can see why it might have won that prestigious award. The themes are very strong, the character growth is unique, and the setting has a tangible effect on the entire story. Unfortunately, I absolutely hated to read this book. The summary of the book online is a much better read than the actual book. The sentences are short and choppy, stopping the reader from total immersion. The main character is extremely boring and someone that people walk all over. The plot is meandering, without any focus or tension. Finally, the dialogue is difficult to wade through and not engaging in any way. Most of the story felt like listening to people tell you a story that had nothing to do with the actual story. I just had a hard time reading this book and unfortunately, it was a book club book, so I could not stop reading it. This is a challenging read and may really appeal to academic readers but I just couldn't get into it.

1/5

So pretentious. I hated it. I didn't finish it.

The blurb:

n  When Quoyle's two-timing wife meets her just desserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As Quoyle confronts his private demons--and the unpredictable forces of nature and society--he begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery. 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.n

My comments: A slow-moving tale. An excellent read combining heartbreak, healing and pulling it all together when a community of people with their own stories to share, become the backbone of a new life for Quoyle and his two daughters. Folk tales, family secrets, history, and nature become characters in the book. The book offers a full menu of emotions served with rich tales of the fishing community who battle it out against natural disasters and life's unexpected challenges. Informative and entertaining. Excellent prose spread all over the plot and story line.

I just loved being there! However ....... I don't want to live there for sure! You have to be born there to survive it all. Meeting the characters, though, enriched my life immensely. I just fell in love with them all.

RECOMMENDED!

The Shipping News winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award taking place in Newfoundland was at times endearing, other times humorous, and sometimes dark in its portrayal that is characteristic of the contemporary literature by E. Annie Proulx. As one who often wonders what inspires an author to write a certain book with certain themes, Ms. Proulx gives us an answer in her Acknowledgements when she states: "And without the inspiration of Clifford W. Ashley's wonderful 1944 work, The Ashley Book of Knots, which I had the good fortune to find at a yard sale for a quarter, this book would have remained just the thread of an idea." The theme of knots is carried throughout the book with many chapters opening with an epigraph highlightng the formation of knots complete with an illustration that is relevant to the themes and events of the upcoming chapter in the enchanting and mystical setting of Newfoundland.

Quoyle, working as a reporter for a third-string newspaper in upstate New York, is a single father of two struggling little girls, bringing Quoyle to conclude that perhaps they all need a change in their lives. After the death of his father, Quoyle is persuaded by his maiden aunt for them to pack up the children and travel to Newfoundland in search of their anestral home. His aunt has regaled the family with all of the family legends and folklore in Newfoundland of several generations of Quoyles. Finding the abandoned Quoyle home for the past forty years precariously perched on a rock cliff, they all decide that with some major work it is a possibility to restore this dilapidated house. Here in the village of Killick-Claw, Quoyle is hired as a columnist for Gammy Bird and in charge of the shipping news and mariner disasters, which in the oftentimes harsh conditions of the waters around Newfoundland, are plenty. The quirky newsroom and the other reporters as well as the editor and owner of the paper keeps one's interest in this outback journalism with the quirky characters. As he and his children settle into their new lives, there are new friends and relationships formed in this very different life in Newfoundland as they each struggle with the demons from their past. E. Annie Proulx's prose melds with the changing textures of the weather and the sea throughout this novel. An example being from the chapter entitled Poetic Navigation and the epigraph from THE MARINER'S DICTIONARY as follows:

n  

"Fog. . . The warm water of the Gulf Stream penetrating high latitudes is productive of fog, especially in the vicinity of the Grand Banks where the cold water of the Labrador Current makes the contrast in the temperatures of adjacent waters most striking."

n

A book about knots. You know, nautical knots, fisherman's knots, each chapter beginning with a sketch of the intricate knot and its name.

And I can only tie my shoes. On a good day.

I don't remember nautical terms. They are lost on me. Always have been. If the ship goes down, it's going down with me.

But I know knots. A knot at the base of my throat, an edgy knot taking over my stomach, a knot where my colon used to be.

And, reading this unnerving masterpiece, you feel the knots. Because disaster looms in every page of this beauty. Disaster. A little like life, but worse. Life in Newfoundland.

Horrible, near-grotesque people. People you would never want to know, or date. Food I would never touch, outside of starvation.

And OUTSTANDING writing, as in STANDS OUT from anything I've ever read in my life. Luminous, poetic, inspired writing. As good as Morrison or Faulkner, but funny, too. I shook my head in awe, shook my head on every page, as I swallowed around the knots in my neck.

This novel left me shipwrecked.

Won the Pulitzer in ’94, and rightly so – it’s a bleak, stark novel set in a bleak, stark place – Newfoundland – with enough hope and redemption to be realistic without being syrupy. Quoyle is a large mound of a loser human who has been a loser, and abused for it, all his life. After his nymphomaniac whore of a wife is killed in a car crash after selling their two kids, Bunny and Sunshine, to a kiddie pornographer, he starts over again by being dragged off to his ancestral home in Newfoundland with his tough-as-nails aunt, Agnis.
His redemption is not just in the slow blooming of love with a local woman, Wavey, who’s equally wounded. It’s more in the fact that by the end he has built a true family in the people of Killick-Claw, established himself as a true local with a true home, redeemed the family name, and become comfortable within himself and his capability for love. Some of the plot’s structural elements are difficult to read in its hideousness, because people are hideous. I loved the writing style – her descriptions of the violent, unpredictable land are beautiful, and Quoyle’s habit of framing situations as newspaper headlines is hilarious. The pace changes, from a slow, lyrical brushstroke to a lurching, staccato rattling of words, and the artistry never feels aware of itself. Proulx’s view of humanity may be bruising, but her sure, gentle guiding of them into their own, realistic, appropriate redemptions reveals a strong, hard-eyed hope that can still spark in a winter storm.

Such a dreary story with uninteresting characters in a drab setting. It just wasn't for me.

DNF, 25%
I figure when I come on Goodreads to read 1 and 2 star reviews (and agree with them) it’s not worth finishing the book. The writing style isn’t compelling to me. The story is slow. The characters are flat. I know many people love this author, including the Pulitzer committee, but she’s not for me.

A love story of a single father, a newspaper reporter, who returns to Newfoundland to live in an ancestral home and meets a local woman. Everyone in the present is haunted in some way by victims claimed by nature in the past, usually by the sea.



The plot revolves around ordinary characters - ordinary, quirky Newfies, that is. They are overweight or pock-marked or not quite attractive, in that left-behind kind of way They are all damaged in some way, usually by the loss of loved ones to nature.

But the characters are small specks against the giant backdrop of rock, sea and storms. I'll call this an "environmental novel" of Newfoundland. Man and woman against nature. We think of an island as the intersection of land and water - two systems - but it's really the intersection of three great earth systems - land, water and atmosphere.



Here we see Mother Nature in all her glory inflicting herself on the puny inhabitants of this rock coast. Wind, rain, waves, snow, storms, ice, seafoam, icebergs are really the main characters.



Shipping News is the antithesis of the beach book. This is one for a good winter read by the fireplace or under the electric blanket.

Photos of Newfoundland:
Top from CBC on Facebook
middle from expedia.com
bottom from newfoundlandlabrador.com

[Pictures added 4/11/22; edited for typos 8/17/23]

n  

“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.”

n

And so, my odyssey through the book comes to an end. I started this book on the last day of Autumn and finished on the first day of spring. However, the timing was so wrong for this book. I was craving a winter/Christmas quick read and, don't know why, picked this one.

Don't get me wrong, I more than enjoyed Proulx' writing and the magical prose. It seems strange at first, however you get accustomed. She's definitely a master of storytelling. Her ability to evoke emotions is unparalleled, making you feel every joy, sorrow, and struggle of her characters as if they were your own.

Whether it’s the quiet ache of loneliness, the unsettling ease of deciding to scatter an uncle’s ashes in an outdoor toilet, or the raw, almost dreamlike sensation of death as if drifting into sleep, she brings every character’s world to life with striking authenticity and depth.

However, I’m not of the same opinion about her characters. None of them was relatable to me, they all were somehow transparent.

I fell in love with Proulx' writing from the Brokeback Mountain. Shorter works unveil an author’s potential with striking clarity, distilling their craft into its purest form, where every word carries weight and the talent becomes more concentrated.

Reading her work isn’t just an experience—it’s an immersion into the very essence of storytelling.

First off, just to set you straight, I liked this book. A fine piece of literature for sure: tight, creative writing, deeply human and interesting characters, a stellar setting, and a well-fashioned plot. Yet...something was missing here for me. In the middle of the book I really found myself struggling to care about these characters. Really, and what bugs me is why. Was it the overall depressing tone of the book, the weak-mindedness of some of the characters, the sometime stilted dialog, or something else entirely, subtle and unidentifiable? Maybe it was that I just didn't like it. I remember a childhood argument with a friend where I told him that I didn't like a particular piece of music and he asked why and I told him that I really had no reason, I just didn't like it. This didn't work for him at all. You must qualify you answer, he said. Well, I think I tried but in the end it really just came down to not liking it, ya know? I now think it’s quite OK to just not like something. Not that you shouldn't TRY to understand why something doesn't work for you, ask and question what makes or doesn’t make something great, what propels a piece of art into something special and memorable. In the end, though, to simply say "I don't like it" is A-OK with me. Definitive, right? Clearly positioned. Given the subjective nature of all art, I am amazed that this is not the answer we all give when asked our opinion on something (perhaps it should be!).

But again, I did like this book, especially the end (never has so much happened in the last 30 pages!) Also, there are some real gems of diction here, like this: "It was harder to count his errors now, perhaps because they had compounded beyond counting, or had blurred into his general condition." Great. Or this: "For the devil had long ago taken a shine to Tert Card, filled him like a cream horn with itch and irritation. His middle initial was X. Face like cottage cheese clawed with a fork." Yikes! Love it. Also, great name, Tert Card. So anyway, three stars from me, which is actually pretty low if you haven't noticed. Still a good book and a good read, but not one of my favorites.