Shipping News (vencedor do Pulitzer em 1994) tem como personagem principal Quoyle, um jornalista casado e com duas filhas. Quando a mulher foge com um dos seus amantes, Quoyle abandona Nova Iorque e vai para a casa dos seus antepassados, na Terra Nova, com uma tia e as filhas.

Embora com muitos detalhes sobre a vida dos pescadores, a leitura nunca foi monótona, mantendo-me sempre interessada nesse mundo de temperaturas gélidas compensadas pelo calor humano.

A little while ago, I decided I was going to re-read certain books I'd read far back in the past, at least one a month. This was my first one. I first read "The Shipping News" in the mid-1990s, fairly soon after it was published. All I remembered was liking it very much, finding the author's writing style incredibly unique in a pleasing way, and that it was set in Newfoundland.

All of those things rang true again upon rereading. But I hadn't remembered what a large-hearted writer Annie Proulx is! And what a masculine writer, I have to say. Based only upon this novel and the famous short story that became such a classic gay film, I sense her muses are men, not women. She writes about the less-fair sex - gay and straight – incredibly well.

In this case, it's Quoyle, a mid-30s overweight man in New York State, directionless and timid, forced into crisis upon the deaths of his far-less-than-faithful wife, and far-less-than-loving parents. An aunt surfaces, suggesting that he and his very young daughters move with her back to the ancestral home, Newfoundland.

They go. The story is rich, and Newfoundland becomes one of the main characters. You won't find a lot of the words in a lot of these sentences in any dictionary, unless you happen to have a Newfoundland English one.

And initially you may laugh in a less-than-kind way at Quoyle's naivete, timidity, obesity. That won't last long. If the novel works for you, you shall come to love him and the many colorful Newfie characters you and he encounter.

Proulx uses the particularities of place and idiom to spin that old tale hiding out most everywhere and inside most everyone. Love does make the world go round, even for 'losers' off the beaten track.

I can certainly appreciate anyone who rewrites a language to fit her own style. Proulx is a steward of the finer craft, forcing us to choose whether we should continue on with a story that is of no interest, or shelve a book that's so beautifully written. I opted to finish the novel, if for nothing else, to see something beautiful... and I did.

It is not my intention to say that the story was boring, because it wasn't. To me, it was one of those stories that can be taken or left, no regrets. What besets me is that Proulx, a visionary scribbler and truly one-of-a-kind in our generation, had such an intense power over me that she forced me to finish the novel. Her words, her syntax, her composition... they all set the stage for a truly remarkable symphony of prose. So much so that if anyone else had written the story, it would have gotten the two stars it might've deserved. But it was Proulx, and she earned it.

“The Shipping News” is E. Annie Proulx’s second novel, published back in 1993. The book won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. She has a unique voice and her command of language is impressive. The strength of this book is her prose and strong sense of place. She writes in short staccato sentences, sometimes even using incomplete phrases, but with such inventive and fitting language. She seems to have a vast vocabulary but uses rare words sparingly. Her unpretentious talent is more from finding creative uses of everyday words. This talent is fitting for a story that largely takes place in a sparse, inhospitable place, with simple characters and results in real depth underneath these humble characters and locals.

The story follows Quoyle, a hulk of a man, who’s life begins with dysfunction and tragedy. He is a man adrift in upstate New York, deadened from abuse and ill treatment. The only positive thing he receives from his early life and broken marriage to an unfaithful and dreadful wife, is two daughters. An Aunt, Angis Hamm, convinces Quoyle to return to his ancestral home in Newfoundland where he finds work on the local newspaper. This is where the story really finds solid ground with Proulx deftly describing the local culture, language, and harsh climate of Newfoundland.

If there is a weakness in this book, it’s that the striking language, and intriguing side observations tended to distract me from the story line. There were moments where I became lost in the story and needing to backtrack or accept that I was lost for a bit, until I found enough clues to navigate back to familiar waters. While several key characters were fully formed, many of the secondary characters were one dimensional and never took shape in my mind. However, the strength of the prose and the rich setting were enough to keep me engaged throughout the entire story. There was just enough struggle and heartbreak to drive the story and we see real change in Quoyle.

I finished “The Shipping News” feeling that Proulx is a better writer than character builder and story teller. But I still believe she’s a talent and this is an important work. There is such great connection between her language skills and the setting and people of this book. The desolate location, angry ocean, and gritty town feel like the best, most recognizable character in the book, if that makes sense. Worthy of its acclaim and awards, I give it four and a half stars, rounded to five. An artistic tale of small triumphs and personal growth perched in the richly layered backdrop of a seaside northern town.

n  n    n      “We face up to awful things because we can't go around them, or forget them. The sooner you say 'Yes, it happened, and there's nothing I can do about it,' the sooner you can get on with your own life. You've got children to bring up. So you've got to get over it. What we have to get over, somehow we do. Even the worst things.” n    n  n

I was feeling a bit slumpy before I started this book and when I opened the first page, I was hooked. The passages were beautiful, the way the author pulled you in with her lush writing style was just amazing. Just to tell you how much amazing the first chapter was I reread it twice.


The story follows the life of a young man by the name of n  Quoylen, after having literally one of the most miserable life from childhood all the way to his mid-thirties.After losing his ungrateful sorry-excuse-for-a-human-being wife to a tragic accident and both his parents, he decides to start a new life by going back to his family original home. We follow him to Newfoundland Coast in Canada, where we see how he tries to adjust life as a single father, finding himself, learning his heritage and just coping.

I have to say that I loved some of Annie Proulx's writing not all of it tho. This being a Pulitzer Prize Winner in 1994 and National Book Award I was expecting to be blown away but towards the end of the story... It went flat and I found myself wanting the book to end :(

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

I have to give it to the author tho, she showcased the main character beautifully and you could see how he grows slowly throughout the novel. He didn't get  unrealistically growth but one that was believable like showing more love to his daughters, letting people in even though he has been hurt in the past, facing challenges and overcoming them and so much more. Also the main character was overweight, we kind of see the stigma that comes with that topic. It made him flawed and relatable, I wanted to jump in the pages and just give him a hug.

n  n    n      “Everybody that went away suffered a broken heart. "I'm coming back some day," they all wrote. But never did. The old life was too small to fit anymore.” n    n  n

Also another plus that was presented in the book is the featuring of a Down's Syndrome character, a young boy and the mother who handled the situation very well. She didn't hide the child from society but was always supportive and helping him fit well with others. I loved that addition and sort of seeing that aspect of the story.



Now to the parts that didn't sit well with me. The book to some extent read like a shipping manual or something to do with fishermen or building of boats. I didn't really care for that like at all. They were actually the parts that I found myself yawning and sort of dozing off sadly.



I can definitely see the demographic for that part of the story but it wasn't for me, I actually have a little fear the ocean (thalassophobia) I felt a little scared when the characters were describing the ocean and icebergs, props to the author for creating such a atmosphere but I still wasn't on board(pun intended). I wanted more of the characters but regardless it was still okay.



I am still disappointed though, this won prizes, I expected my socks to be blown off, especially since my run with Pulitzer Prize winner books (The Goldfinch) has been awesome. I guess you can't win them all. I recommend this book if you are a fan of ocean fishing, ships and Canadian Lit.

n  n    n      “We're all strange inside. We learn how to disguise our differences as we grow up.”n    n  n

Thanks for reading and Happy reading :)

The Shipping News is the story of Quoyle, a large and awkward man from a dysfunctional family who has “[s]tumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing.” Living in central New York, he is grief-stricken at age 36 by the death of his wife, Petal, despite the fact that she had never loved him, cheated on him constantly, and was killed in a car crash while on her way to Florida with another man after selling their two young daughters to a child pornographer. Quoyle is devoted to his daughters and gets them back, but his life has been completely upended.

His aunt Agnis proposes that she, Quoyle, and the girls move up the coast to Newfoundland, the Quoyle family’s ancestral home where Agnis was raised. Quoyle manages to get a job offer at a small-town newspaper and agrees to the move. In Newfoundland, they find the old abandoned family home still standing in its isolated spot on the coast, and they begin to rehabilitate it. Quoyle starts his job at the newspaper, The Gammy Bird, with its small staff of oddball characters, where he is in charge of the shipping news and news about car wrecks. Gradually, despite the bleak Newfoundland weather, Quoyle learns to like the town and fit in with its quirky but close-knit community. As he makes new connections and develops both his professional newspaperman skills and his non-professional skills appropriate to Newfoundland life (boating, gutting fish, carpentry, and more), he begins to have more confidence in himself and more appreciation for his own worth.

This book is definitely not a fast or particularly “easy” read. Proulx’s prose is beautiful in an exceptionally “literary” way (which is probably the primary reason for the book winning the Pulitzer Prize). She is especially good at describing the geography and the weather of Newfoundland and showing how the people living there are tough and resilient and stick together out of necessity. I felt that I was getting a real sense of what it must be like to live in a place like that, where life is dependent on nature and neighbors.

Proulx doesn’t really romanticize that life, despite her descriptions of its harsh beauty. Although some folks rhapsodize about the old days, Proulx has Tert Card remark on the irony: “‘Nobody, nobody in their right mind would go back to them hard, hard times. People was only kind because life was so dirty you couldn’t afford to have any enemies. It was all swim or all sink. A situation that makes people very sweet.’” And now, most of the younger people move away. They always say they’ll come back, but they never do. “The old life was too small to fit anymore.”

But it was enjoyable for me to read about that “small life.” I enjoyed many of Proulx’s characters. Aunt Agnis is an engaging woman whose sympathetic backstory is only gradually revealed. There are numerous funny scenes involving the oddballs on the newspaper staff and others in the town. Quoyle himself is not a particularly likable protagonist, but I found that as he grew more comfortable and confident, I liked him more and more, and I was rooting for a happy ending for him.

Approssimazione, approssimazione, approssimazione.

Prendete Holt (Colorado) con la sua main street, con le sue casette, con i suoi abitanti giovani e vecchi, ognuno con le sue paturnie, qualcuno con i suoi figli e qualcuno con i suoi misteri che si trascina dal passato - prendetela e trasportatela armi e bagagli nella costa nord del Newfoundland, e apportate le modifiche strettamente necessarie per via delle variazioni climatiche/geografiche. Aggiungete le approssimazioni che Haruf si era per lo meno risparmiato. Ecco fatto il romanzo della Proulx.

Approssimazione nel lavoro editoriale e di traduzione: a parte la valanga di refusi classici (lettera doppia, lettera mancante, ecc.); non si può ficcare la nota bio-bibliografica tra la dedica, l'epigrafe e il primo capitolo; e soprattutto non si possono leggere strafalcioni del genere "Se si trasferisce una pendola da una zona equatoriale a un paese del nord, le lancette dell'orologio si muoverà più in fretta". Quanto alla traduzione, ci sono parecchie frasi messe di sghimbescio che lasciano intuire una gestione maldestra; ma la pasticciata peggiore si ha allorquando la zia racconta del proprio passato, lasciando intendere a nipote e nipotine che il "suo" Warren fosse un marito mentre in realtà si trattava di Irene Warren, dunque la zia vuole omettere la propria omosessualità. Piccolo particolare: in inglese questa omissione è praticabile in quanto i verbi non vengono declinati al maschile o al femminile, ma nella traduzione in italiano tutti i verbi riferiti al "povero Warren" sono declinati al femminile, così si assiste alla grottesca scena della zia che racconta delle mezze frottole, le quali frottole sono palesemente smascherate dai verbi tutti declinati al femminile, con le due nipotine (ovviamente sveglissime e attentissime e simpaticissime) che non chiedono nemmeno una spiegazione di questa stranezza nel discorso della zia, che non si scandalizzano, nessunissima reazione. Come si poteva ovviare a questo pasticcio? Non saprei, io non sono traduttrice di mestiere, ma certo glissare in maniera così grossolana non è stata la soluzione più felice.

Approssimazione nella costruzione di quel poco di trama che c'è: com'è possibile che persone che vivono alla giornata, quasi in bolletta, tuttavia stipulino una polizza su tutto, sulla casa, sulla vita, e abbiano sempre pagato regolarmente tutte le rate di modo che per ben due volte nel corso del romanzo sarà la riscossione del premio di assicurazione a salvare le chiappe a tutta la allegra famigliola? Ma non è tutto. La goffaggine peggiore si raggiunge verso il finale, nella scena in cui un tizio uscito per pescare resta in panne perché il motore della barca ha fatto cilecca. Ok. Il gatto di bordo gli ha pisciato su una nassa (ma come l'ha visto se è al buio, senza motore, senza luci e senza niente!?!) e perciò lui vuol lanciare la nassa in acqua per sciacquarla (sta andando alla deriva ma è quello il suo maggior pensiero, non si può aspettare di tornare a casa!?!) ma una cima dell'ancorotto della nassa gli si è attorcigliata attorno alla caviglia (manco fosse un serpente !?!) e quindi in pratica lui si è lanciato in acqua da solo; una volta caduto in acqua ha fatto per estrarre il coltello che tiene in tasca per tagliare la cima, ma il coltello si è slegato dalla cordicella che lo assicura alla cintura dei pantaloni (ma non doveva essere marinaio e pescatore provetto?!?!) e infine udite udite, il coltello gli è picchiato in testa facendogli perdere i sensi. Bum. Era più credibile farlo scivolare su una buccia di banana, e al limite venire a raccontarci che la banana se la era mangiata il gatto per combattere il mal di mare.

Approssimazione nella scrittura in sé. Io non posso avere tra le mani un Premio Pulitzer e National Book Award e ritrovarmi a leggere quanto segue: "Per le scale gli venne in mente un'immagine. L'amore era forse una busta di caramelle assortite a cui si poteva attingere più di una volta? Alcune pizzicavano sulla lingua, altre evocavano profumi notturni. Alcune avevano un ripieno amaro come la bile, altre erano ricoperte di miele e veleno. Altre ancora venivano mandate giù in fretta. Ma mescolate tra banali mentine e caramelle alla frutta, se ne potevano trovare di squisite. Alcune avevano un cuore di spine mortali, ma altre donavano calma, e un piacere gentile. Le sue dita si stavano forse chiudendo intorno a una di queste?". Questa menata della vita che è come una scatola di cioccolatini, l'amore che è come una busta di caramelle, io la posso anche accettare se sto leggendo un libro di Fabio Volo o di Luca Bianchini, ma se sto leggendo un Pulitzer proprio no. Nessuna puzza sotto il naso, io in libreria ho ben n  duen libri di Volo, di cui uno l'ho pure letto, e sapevo che non dovevo aspettarmi grandi cose da lui, ma pur nella sua splendida ingenuità non mi ha dato il senso di approssimazione che ho trovato qui.

Un'infinità di spunti, temi che vengono introdotti e poi abbandonati senza essere minimamente approfonditi. Compare di striscio una rivolta per la rivendicazione dei diritti civili e lotta contro il razzismo, ma viene abbandonata immediatamente. Mi è sembrata una strizzatina d'occhio a qualcuno o a qualcosa, forse per stavolta valeva la pena lasciar perdere, visto che siamo sul circolo polare artico, per stavolta le tematiche saranno altre. C'è un tentativo di affrontare i temi economia/ecologia, i diritti dei pescatori, il mercato del lavoro di queste terre che tenta di convertirsi dalla pesca al petrolio e poi dal petrolio a qualcos'altro che sia un ritorno più verso la natura, ma il tutto rimane molto abbozzato e sfuocato; la questione petrolio si limita ad un personaggio che è sostenitore incallito dell'economia basata sull'estrazione di petrolio e appende in ufficio un quadro con l'immagine di una petroliera, poi questo tizio deciderà di lasciare Terranova per andarsene sul continente e così in ufficio tolgono il quadro; la questione "pesca" si limita più o meno ad illustrare come si eviscera un merluzzo e qualche considerazione sulle dimensioni dei merluzzi di una volta a paragone dei merluzzi di oggi.
Lo stesso dicasi del tema nostalgia, dolore della patria, amore/odio verso la terra madre o la terra degli antenati. Abbiamo il protagonista che ritorna nella terra dei suoi antenati pur non avendola mai conosciuta e vi trova l'opportunità di ricostruirsi una vita, c'è chi vorrebbe andarsene ma non se ne va, c'è chi vorrebbe andarsene e infatti se ne va; sul giornale locale leggiamo le testimonianze di chi se n'è andato e vorrebbe tornare, ma alla fine il nodo non si stringe, una morale non c'è. Sul tema del cambiare vita, cambiare tutto, ci poteva esser tanto altro da dire. Qui ci sono solo una miriade di personaggi, troppi personaggi introdotti troppo frettolosamente, ai quali non si fa in tempo ad affezionarsi e nemmeno ad interessarsi.

Il progressivo disvelamento dei misteri relativi al passato di protagonisti e altri comprimari, può sembrare "ben dosato" ma in realtà è solo sbocconcellato, protratto alla lunga, ed è questo che causa la prolissità che già altri hanno giustamente notato. Ad allungare la minestrina, come sempre, concorrono innumerevoli piccoli cammei e brevi episodi tutti slegati tra loro e tutti slegati dalla trama, se la trama ci fosse, ma come dicevo sopra una vera trama non c'è, l'unica trama qui è la presenza di comunità, che si chiami Holt o Killick-Claw, poco cambia.

E' un vero peccato perché l'ambientazione e l'atmosfera avevano del potenziale, inizialmente me le stavo gustando; incentrare la storia attorno alla casa di famiglia come se fosse una protagonista anche lei, anche questa è un'idea molto apprezzabile; la scena in cui la casa viene distrutta dalla tempesta è ben scritta, ma... gli aspetti positivi della lettura sono troppo pochi per poterne dare un giudizio positivo. Due stelle di generosità.

4.5 stars rounded down.

I've been getting lucky with my book selections these past many months. I've really liked or absolutely loved every one I've read, maybe I'm just easy to please as a novice reader. As I was reading this book, I knew basically right away (again I must be easy like that) that I'd really like it but at the same time I could see why this book didn't do it for many people. It's a "slow burn" throughout. I've discovered that I love a book like that. A slow burn for me can be comforting and cozy. This one was at times, but certainly not the whole way through. It had dark parts, dreary parts and the main character is a mopey dude.

I will say this, Proulx used some, for lack of a better term "odd" writing scattered throughout. I'm not sure how to describe it. I feel like she wrote unrealistic conversation happening when she introduced a character or two (Tert Card especially) or it reads at times like suddenly the time skips forward a beat, when no hint was given. It felt unrealistic and "rushed" like the timing of the scene being told doesn't quite work. I am being picky? I probably am somewhat given it's a Pulitzer Prize winner. I will say I only really noticed that she wrote like that primarily in the first half of the book. A lot of this book was lost on me, I will gladly admit. It had TONS of technical boat terms and a boat full of Newfoundland terms.

With that said, the positives, Annie Proulx ties together so many beautiful sentences. My god, the way she's puts together her descriptions of the people and places of costal Newfoundland gave the book such a comical, beautiful, dark and bright tone to it. SO MANY different descriptions of the ocean and the sky. Lightly sprinkled throughout she used such a subtle humor at times, you barely know it's there.

In the end I couldn't care less that I didn't understand 300 of the words she wrote, I got the point and thoroughly enjoyed every chapter.

If I read this book in say 10 years from now, I could very well want to give it 5 stars.

BORING

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx | Some Rambling Thoughts
https://youtu.be/PKyGreN54WA

Journalist, writer and wordsmith American Annie Proulx won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994 with this critically acclaimed in literary circles second novel. It doesn't take a genius to spot my use of 'literary circles' as probably not being a compliment about this story of an awkward (physically and visually) cuckolded outlier having no other real option than picking up sticks and moving (with his daughters and an aunt) to his ancestral home in a remote part of Newfoundland in Canada, where he sort of, almost by accident finds himself. A book lauded for its prose, its portrayal of a quirky cast, and details of life in the past and present in this remote port community, all tinged with an underlying delicately dark humour. At least on this occasion, even though this was just too random, too uninteresting and too artificially constructed for me, I can see what others see in it. Just a 3 out of 12, One Star read for me though.

Where this book went so wrong for me was having such an intriguing and eye opening start with the cuckolding of the main protagonist and his sad docile responses to the situations his wife put him into... and to go from that riveting scenario to tales of the awkward dude finding himself in the cold Canadian outback in a quirky community felt like a cold bucket of water over my reading head!

2022 read

National Book Award--1993
Pulitzer Prize--1994

Many of today's "modern writers" have styles so similar, or maybe a better way to say it, their lack of style makes it hard to distinguish their differences. But there are a few out there that have very distinct writing styles that set them apart, that give them a unique and recognizable identity. Annie Proulx is one of those. Margaret Atwood, Dorothy Allison, and Markus Zusak also come to mind for me.

I've often wondered about Newfoundland, what it's like, what the people are like, would I enjoy living there. Through Annie Proulx words I feel like I have a sense for what it's like, right or wrong, I don't know. The setting and the characters became real to me while reading The Shipping News. They have their troubles, present and past, in this bleak and often harsh environment, but they are likeable for the most part.

The quality of the writing made this an easy and enjoyable read for me. It's certainly deserving of it's awards and acclaim.