Goodreads Mobile | see what your friends are reading

Nov 08, 2009

theduckthief rated it:

At thirty-six, bereft, brimming with grief and thwarted love, Quoyle steered away to Newfoundland, the rock that had generated his ancestors, a place he had never been nor thought to go."

Quoyle lives the life of a sad cliche. His family doesn't like him, his wife has affairs and he's socially awkward. His only thought is for his children, Bunny and Sunshine. When a situation causes them to move from Mockingburg, New York to Newfoundland, Canada, home of Quoyle's ancestors, he fi More...

0 comments like (15 people liked it)

Jan 12, 2008

Nathan rated it:

This book snuck up on me. Tricky tricky. It started out interesting enough. Proulx's writing style is mesmerizing, almost hypnotic. I found the book initially to be a relaxing solace on my commute home after a busy day of work, soley because of its use of language and setting. But I hated the characters. All of them. Quoyle, a big, damp loaf of a man, as Proulx describes him, is the definition of pathetic. His daughters are brats. And his wife Petal is a two-dimensional device created s More...

5 comments like (34 people liked it)

Nov 09, 2007

Jocelyn rated it:

My initial review of this book was simply "Bullllshiiit", but, um, perhaps more explanation is deserved. After a handful of people whose taste I respect raved about this book, I was looking forward to it, and got to page 180 or so before finally admitting "This feels like a chore" and giving it away (and I *rarely* leave books unfinished).

What got to me about this book was mainly Proulx's style was too...forced. Nothing that occured felt real or believed by the au More...

7 comments like (22 people liked it)

Jan 04, 2008

Sheba rated it:

Ah the Shipping News. I remember my heart dropping when I read this book the first time. I thought, "If this is what people are writing, I am no writer."

This book is revolutionary in it's use of language. She punctuates inventively and her punctuation "style" gives her sentences a strange movement. The book moves, it actually moves, as you read it.

There are moments of such pain like when Quoyle lies still in his bed as Petal Bear fucks another man in More...

1 comment like (14 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

hadashi rated it:

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 More...

0 comments like (6 people liked it)

Jul 01, 2007

Eli rated it:

This is one of the very best novels I've had the chance to read. It's not just that the story is rich in and of itself - and it is - it's that the words themselves are so artfully assembed that they provide layers of undercurrents that add depth and emotion to the narrative. This book reads like a symphony, with many intertwined themes and narratives all woven together into a whole, unified picture.

Proulx writes in choppy short sentecnes. It's akward and clumsy language viewed again More...

0 comments like (10 people liked it)

Aug 19, 2010

Rachel rated it:

It took me a while to get into this book, but once I did I really liked it. Annie Proulx does a fantastic job writing this novel in a style that places you in the heart of cold, fish-stinky Newfoundland. She then fills that land with such a warm, genuine and quirky cast of characters that you have no choice but to warm up to the novel. By the time you finish, her themes and motifs are very obvious, but she develops them so subtly that they are completely believable and not at all forced. To top More...

7 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jul 06, 2008

John rated it:

This book is so unlike the majority of books that I read that it came as a pleasnt surprise.

I really,really like Margaret Atwood and found more than a passing resembalence to her work in Proulx's writing style.

It came in the form of the vivid descriptions, inward looking/intense characterisations, introspective human feeling and everyday circumstances of highs/lows - despair/elation - the whole gamut of human emotion. This and the Canadian link, of course...

More...

3 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Andy rated it:

I confess that I've never actually read The Shipping News. I have listened to it, several, several times on cd while driving back and forth between Chapel Hill, NC and Macon, GA. With a protagonist the author describes as "a great, damp loaf of a man," you know you're being set up for an anti-hero kind of story. The thing is, Quoyle does become a hero, in one of the more real, and understated, senses that you can be one--as a father, lover, widower, journalist, human. And I hope I More...

1 comment like (5 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

April rated it:

This book gets me every time. It has some of the most brilliant writing I've ever encountered, and I am amazed by the way the characters develop and draw me in. At the beginning of the book, the main character is hit by tragedy so many times in rapid succession that it actually seems funny in a way. Bam! parents dead! Bam! wife run off! Bam! children stolen! Bam! wife dead! And all of this happening to such a lumpen hulking dolt of a man that it is hard to feel any real sympathy, just a dazed an More...

0 comments like (8 people liked it)

Jul 01, 2008

Laura rated it:

Great book about beginning again after bitter disappointment. In the end, we learn that love doesn't have to hurt to be real.

The author has a very interesting writing style. Took a while for me to get into its rhythm, but I did enjoy it.

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Nov 30, 2008

Tara rated it:

Written in the same fierce, spare style as her Wyoming stories, this book has a hundred ways to describe the appearance of the ocean without ever feeling forced or trite. The weatherbeaten sea-dogs of Newfoundland and the grieved and rootless protagonist run up against each other again and again and it seems as though this sweet and hapless man will never find his way here until after the climax of the novel, when suddenly everything fits together in the same simple way that all things Proulx m More...

0 comments like (3 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2007

Sera rated it:

Snore.

7 comments like (5 people liked it)

Jan 09, 2011

Jennifer (aka EM) rated it:

Bleak but hopeful, mystical and magical – a belated coming-of-age story. Proulx had a hard road to climb with me to get Nfld right, as The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is my gold standard in that regard. But she succeeded magnificently. Treated the place as a character, as it needs to be. This is an evocative exploration of one man’s inner landscape – as harsh and unknown to him at the start as the one to which he is forced to return. Themes of confronting a familial legacy of sh More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Mar 12, 2011

Joy H. rated it:

_The Shipping News_ by Annie Proulx

I enjoyed reading this touching book.

I read somewhere a while back that Proulx's writing style is considered to be spare. I didn't think about that while I was reading but I now I realize that it's true. Now I'm wondering how many other writers have a "spare" writing style like that. I'm also wondering where I heard that comment about her style.
EDITED:
PS-I found the following about Proulx's style at LibraryThing's m More...

2 comments like (1 person liked it)

Oct 07, 2008

Julie rated it:

You know you're in trouble when you pan a Pulitzer prize winner, but pan I must. This book bored me to tears. Perpetual motion and its status as "currently reading" on Goodreads together got me through it. I didn't care what happened to whom or how it would end, I just wanted it over. Amazing the things that passed for excitement and were given excessive air time in this novel: an incredibly detailed rendition of the kids' Christmas pageant; knitting; the uneventful daily commute More...

2 comments like (9 people liked it)

Oct 10, 2008

Scott rated it:

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 som More...

3 comments like (4 people liked it)

Jan 14, 2008

Tony rated it:

I read this book when it first came out and was memorized Proulx's ability to transport the reader to a remote fishing village dominated by winter weather, a rocky coastline hostile to foreign sailors and the old collection of charming and smarmy folks who make up a port town . In her acknowledgments, Proulx credits several people who helped her understand the mindset of the villagers and even a causal reading shows Proulx got those lessons write.

That said, having reread the book More...

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Aug 26, 2007

michael spencer rated it:

This book is for displaying the front cover on one's bookshelf. It is mysterious, an internal maze of intent and with great depth into the nature of conscious experience. Of course, it is true that a book with cold weather settings will sometimes entertain me enough, but the setting is backlight compared to the perceptions and tenderness of character; this is quite simply a masterpiece.

I received this (as I did a number of books for a handful of years) from my sister, who used to be More...

6 comments like (3 people liked it)

Feb 05, 2010

Ron rated it:

3.5 stars. Expected better for a Pulitzer Prize winner

Well-written, though she weakened some key players by making them play to stereotypes. (That wouldn't normally be worth mentioning, but Proulx cuts across so many stereotypes so well.) The closing disappointed. Just a little too sweet and improbably.

Liked her knot and nautical introduction to each chapter.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Nov 23, 2008

Sarah rated it:

I picked up this book almost on a whim and had absolutely no idea of what it was about and pretty much just dug in. It's a tale which takes place in the changing maritime economy of a coastal shipping port in Newfoundland. The setting in and of itself was interesting enough to keep the pages turning.
The characters aren't anything special, and aren't snazzy or flashy. Yet they are full of humanity and disappointment and hope. This is a good read when you want a well-written slice of life t More...

1 comment like (2 people liked it)

Feb 01, 2011

Tommyt rated it:

STILL my favorite novel. Finished it sometime in late December of 1994 & I just haven't read another book like it, not even Proulx's other works match this one.

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

David rated it:

By my calculation, Annie Proulx owes me close to $20, and several unrecoverable hours of my life. Not only did I buy and read this wretched book, but - inexplicably - I forked out another $7 to go see the equally wretched movie. I suppose I have only myself to blame for the latter exercise in misjudgement, given that I knew in advance how appallingly bleak the book was, and that it involved the wretchedly vile Kevin Spacey.

gaaaaah!

OK, so Annie P. achieves partial redempti More...

2 comments like (5 people liked it)

Dec 16, 2009

Jeremy rated it:

This is by E. Annie Proulx, so all the characters are named things like "Tobogganlips McCupboardcake" and everyone endures a series of darkly humorous, preciously rendered misfortunes. Though the movie was nothing to write home about either, I actually liked it better than the book, for the enjoyable scenery, half-decent performances, and dearth of skull-shatteringly dippy prose.

It's not like it's the worst thing I've ever read, and I never entertained the thought of qui More...

0 comments like (4 people liked it)

Feb 25, 2009

Jesica rated it:

dark, but one of my favorites, I loved the language.

0 comments like (2 people liked it)

Apr 20, 2010

Joyce rated it:

Quoyle is a fat, hulking lump of a man with an odd-shaped head, a chin so large it more or less deforms his face, and a personality to match the disaster of his appearance.[return][return]This, then, is one of the protagonists of The Shipping News.[return][return]At 36, after his philandering wife Ruby has died in an automobile accident with her current lover, Quoyle s aunt persuades him to take his two young daughters sunshine and Bunny and move with her back to the family s origin, Newfoundl More...

0 comments like

Oct 30, 2009

Tim added it

Arr - A Fine Book: First published in 1993, "The Shipping News" is Anne Proulx's second novel. It went on to win a list of prizes, including the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Quoyle isn't exactly the typical hero : although a good, kind-hearted man, he has little faith in himself and his self-confidence is non-existent. Physically, he's a large, red-haired man, with pale eyes, an over-sized chin and no neck. He has little in common with his family : his father is a genuinely obnoxi More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Feb 16, 2009

Cashman rated it:

I stumbled across a reference to this book, realized I'd never read anything by Proulx, and checked it out from the public library. As winter here pretends to be ending (don't believe it) there's something comforting about reading a tale of people on the edge, in harsh climates, scrabbling out a living and yet remaining wholly human at the same time.

At first I found the sentence fragments off-putting - basically the whole novel is written in them - but then they grew on me. It's a More...

0 comments like (1 person liked it)

Jan 20, 2012

Tompkins rated it:

I need to be honest here. I only made it to page thirty before I moved on to another book. I'm someone who will read a book non-stop from 10 PM to 7 AM. I pulled myself through all three Lord of the Rings books even though I had no idea what was going on. However, I could not get through The Shipping News.

First, I absolutely could not stand the writing style. Yes, I understand that it's "new" and "innovative" and reflects the main character's state of mind. I DON'T More...

0 comments like

Dec 24, 2011

Carinya rated it:

This is a tale of self discovery. An unfolding of a family legacy so stained with actual and imagined horrors that the truth remains a murky mystery. The central character, Quoyle, not only attracts derision and misfortune but believes he deserves it. Through the distorted mirrors of his own self disgust he finds first love in the form of Petal, the mother of his two children. She is the embodiment of selfishness, totally unfit as a mother, genuinely and openly indifferent to the devotion of he More...

0 comments like

reviews