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The Shipping News

3.72 of 5 stars 3.72 · rating details · 56,860 ratings · 2,599 reviews

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 begi...more

Paperback, 352 pages

Published January 1st 2002 by Scribner Book Company (first published January 1st 1993)

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Jun 12, 2013 Steve aka Sckenda rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those Needing Self-Esteem

Recommended to Steve aka Sckenda by: Pulitzer Prize; National Book Award

Shelves: new-foundland, local-color, place, memory, family, pulitzer-prize, favorites, favorites-contemporary, canada, movie, movies, national-book-award

To prevent slipping, a knot depends on friction, and to provide friction there must be pressure of some sort. This pressure and the place within the knot where it occurs is called the nip. The security of the knot depends solely on its nip. --“The Ashley Book of Knots,” as quoted in the epigraph of Chapter 12, “The Shipping News.”

It is necessary that someone should be on the side of the defeated. Quoyle is a defeated man, “He knows the taste of brack and seaweed.” Even his name, “Quoyle,” is a...more

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Nov 08, 2009 theduckthief rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 finds himself in ov...more 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 finds himself in over his head. Proulx is a master manipulator in this story as she forces the reader to sympathize with Quoyle's situation. He's dumped into a new setting, new country with only his children and Aunt Agnis to keep him company.

The descriptive detail in this book is fresh and full. "In the bay they saw a scallop dagger halfway to the narrows, a wake like the hem of a slip showing behind it." I feasted on this line because I loved it so much and you can look forward to this richness throughout the story.

Proulx makes Newfoundland come to life. This is likely due to the fact that she splits her time between there and Wyoming. This may not be the kind of Newfoundland you know though. It has this wild and dark, mythical side to it that you may have heard as a stereotype about the province. Incidentally when this book came out, there was some controversy about Proulx`s portrayal of Newfoundlanders. Some people from the province thought readers would assume these stereotypes were true. I would say the novel does nothing to dispel the stereotypical view of `The Rock` and its inhabitants but you have to remember this is Fiction. This is clearly stated on the back of the book.

Watch for the chapter titles. Each relates to a type of knot and informs the reader on the content of the section. Chapter One is entitled "Quoyle", 'a Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on if necessary.' This gives you an idea of Quoyle`s character even before you start reading.

Something that deserves mention is the book won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1994.

Proulx's writing style is unlike anything I've read before. Her syntax is fragmented and her removal of pronouns interrupts the fluidity of the story. For some this may be difficult to get around.

As well, a suspension of disbelief is required as various coincidences and other `unbelievabilities` pop up throughout the book and would be difficult to take otherwise. This includes the strange characters with quirky names like Billy Pretty, Tert Card and Beaufield Nutbeem.

Please note, this novel is not for everyone. The climax of the story occurs at the very beginning of the story and settles into a slow denouement. This is completely contrary to the normal story arc. This a quiet, steady book about family and the idea of home. It is not, I repeat, not a page turner. That being said, I enjoyed the stillness and contemplative quality that rose out of the book. For those who like stories about how a person can change and the influence of the land on the mind, this book is for you.(less)

20 likes · like · see review

Jan 12, 2008 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 solely as...more 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 solely as a catalyst for the story to come. In the beginning it felt a little forced. Then at some point in the second half, the book went from a nice little read to a ferocious page-turner, and I still am not sure how it became so compelling. There was no melodramatic conflict introduced. No secret codes to be found in paintings. Instead, Proulx builds her momentum slowly, slowly, taking you deeper into the lives of these characters, who started out so hard, unattractive, broken, and nasty. The thing of it is, they start to feel so honest. Before you know it, their presence is comforting. I found I wanted to be with them. Wanted to be in the boat with Quoyle. Wanted to see the green house. Wanted to go to the Christmas Pageant. Wanted to eat flipper pie with him and the girls. Wanted to welcome Aunt home.

Quoyle finds redemption from a place that itself is bleak, full of hardship, and dying. I found this to be poetic and strangely uplifting. Its sort of the anti-coming of age story. No beautiful starry-eyed twentysomething trotting off to exotic locations or big cities here. Instead, the story of a middle-aged man who hates himself even more than he hates his circumstance, moving back to his modest roots, finding a lot of darkness in the places he comes from. He watches people fall on hard times and move away, endures monotony, deep cold, harsh storms and odd, forced relationships. And in the midst of it he finds friendship, love, and his own self-worth. I just thought it was beautiful. The scene near the end in which Quoyle prepares to attend the wake for one of his close friends, looks at his gigantic naked body in the mirror, and feels a surge of joy to be such an honest and satisfying moment of redemption. This dying place brings him to life, and eventually, for the first time in his life, he finds joy and peace. And he finds it in himself, not in the circumstances around him.

It snuck up on me. I didn't realize until it was too late how hard I had fallen for this lot. (less)

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Nov 09, 2007 Jocelyn rated it 1 of 5 stars

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 author herself (and it's not that...more

36 likes · like · see review

Jan 04, 2008 Sheba rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 their home--and it's not written in a way wh...more

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Jun 18, 2007 hadashi rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

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 w...more

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Jan 05, 2013 Deborah Ideiosepius rated it 1 of 5 stars

Recommended to Deborah by: Mattie

Shelves: fiction, travestys

Finished. Thank goodness! there should be a way to give negative stars.

This is going to be a review in progress I can see as I wade through the bog of this book;

1. (October 28) A deeply uninteresting, unlikeable boy grows up to be a deeply uninteresting, unlikable man. He marries a nasty piece of work (who is also deeply unlikable) and spits out two children that are exactly the children one goes out of one’s way to avoid at shopping centres.

Parents die, wife dies, aunt shows up out of nowhere a...more Finished. Thank goodness! there should be a way to give negative stars.

This is going to be a review in progress I can see as I wade through the bog of this book;

1. (October 28) A deeply uninteresting, unlikeable boy grows up to be a deeply uninteresting, unlikable man. He marries a nasty piece of work (who is also deeply unlikable) and spits out two children that are exactly the children one goes out of one’s way to avoid at shopping centres.

Parents die, wife dies, aunt shows up out of nowhere and whisks the whole aimless uninteresting lot of them off to a dreary remote end-of-nowhere town in Newfoundland.

That is the plot as it stands so far. This book won awards. Why is it that some committees feel that if it makes you miserable it must be good prose?

Well, to be honest it is - good prose that is - the English is well constructed and the descriptive powers of the Author are formidable. Unfortunately this formidable prose is completely lacking in any mitigating humour that would save it from being heavy, dull and dreary to read.

It might be that some shade of humour and likability may edge it’s way between the covers after the man starts the job after which the book is named. I am just not sure it is worth the slog as so far the only enjoyable part of the book has been the knot work quotes at the start of each chapter.

2. (November 7) There is room for all books in the world, it is good that we do not all read (or write, alike) this review is my opinion however and in my opinion overblown descriptiveness is a cheap and nasty way of convincing people that they are reading high quality literature when they are (usually) not. It is a specific style of writing that is only worthy of parodies such as Cold Comfort Farm, which mocked the florid style very well indeed.

As an example of what I dislike about the over-florid style, The Shipping News is made to measure. Consider the following sentence; “... oilcloth the colour of insect wings” [pg 57]. Do you feel that information as to the colour of the oilcloth has been imparted to you?

Really?
Wings of which insect?
Fruit flies and mosquitoes? (transparent with lovely iridescence and dark veins), Praying mantis? (usually, a delicate shade of green) Cockroaches? (dark brown for the outer wing case and light brown for the inner wings in ninety percent of species).
Or maybe a butterfly which is also an insect, a fact that cannot have escaped an author as addicted as Annie is to using every English word in the dictionary whether or not it is relevant to the meaning she is trying to impart.
(less)

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Jan 09, 2011 Jennifer (aka EM) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: great-movies-from-books, lonely-hearts-club, on-da-rock-or-nearby, prosetry

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 shame, abuse and re...more 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 shame, abuse and rejection; of healing from the storm of the past and letting go of it, so as to love – one’s children, oneself, another. Also: the way place defines character; past defines present. Both can, must be endured -- but both can also be transcended.

Proulx’s prose is crisp and article-less; mimicking the Newfie vernacular well. Her similes are unerringly well-chosen - early morning pink clouds "like salmon fillets"; an early winter sea "like a grim tweed." So many more. The uniting motif and metaphor of the knots woven through scene layered on scene, tying together character and plot. Clever, not cutesy.

I loved it. Very similar in tone, character and theme to Affliction -- you can feel the cold damp wind blow through you. However, the poetry of Proulx's writing landed this unequivocally in the five-star category for me, as such:

"These waters, thought Quoyle, haunted by lost ships, fishermen, explorers gurgled down into sea holes as black as a dog's throat. Bawling into salt broth. Vikings down the cracking winds, steering through fog by the polarized light of sun-stones. The Inuit in skin boats, breathing, breathing, rhythmic suck of frigid air, iced paddles dipping, spray freezing, sleek back rising, jostle, the boat torn, spiraling down. Millenial bergs from the glaciers, morbid, silent except for waves breaking on their flanks, the deceiving sound of shoreline where there was no shore. Foghorns, smothered gun reports along the coast. Ice welding land to sea. Frost smoke. Clouds mottled by reflections of water holes in the plains of ice. The glare of ice erasing dimension, distance, subjecting senses to mirage and illusion. A rare place."

(less)

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Jul 01, 2007 Eli rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 against the litte...more

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Nov 16, 2008 Rachel rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Anyone

Recommended to Rachel by: Linda

Shelves: 2-loved-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 likes · like · see review

Mar 23, 2013 Maciek rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: own-in-paperback, owned-books, national-book-award-for-fiction, read-in-2012, pulitzer-prize-for-fiction, reviewed

Annie Proulx exploded onto the literary scene with the publication of her second novel, The Shipping News. It was 1993 and she was 58. No victim of sophomore jinx, The Shipping News gave Annie a double boost: it won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer prize for Fiction - one of just six books picked by both juries, and has subsequently been adapted into a film.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in a mix of small upstate towns, Quoyle is definitely not having the time of his life. Socially ine...more Annie Proulx exploded onto the literary scene with the publication of her second novel, The Shipping News. It was 1993 and she was 58. No victim of sophomore jinx, The Shipping News gave Annie a double boost: it won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer prize for Fiction - one of just six books picked by both juries, and has subsequently been adapted into a film.

Born in Brooklyn and raised in a mix of small upstate towns, Quoyle is definitely not having the time of his life. Socially inept and not comfortable in his bricklike body, lonesome Quoyle shuffles from occupation to occupation in upstate New York. Marooned in the recession-struck town of Mockinburg, Quoyle tries his hand at journalism - and naively marries a good for nothing bimbo, who gives him two daughters but no love. Petal Bear - all characters in this novel have great names - is a vicious and hateful woman, who however never rises above the plot device necessary to move the story forward. And the story is grim enough - Quoyle finds that his life is falling apart: he has no sense of purpose or belonging. He turns to his aunt, Agnis Hamm, for advice - and it is she who convinces him to leave his miserable life in New York behind, take his daughters and go with her to the home of their ancestors, named after them - to Quoyle's Point, in Newfoundland. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Quoyle chooses The Rock - and so begins the story proper.

Newfoundland is a large island on the eastern coast of Canada, known for its variable maritime weather which can surprise its population on any given day, forcing much of it to grow hard and fight their way through pounding waves and breaking storms. Newfoundland was England's first possession in North America - it became a colony in the early 17th century and remained first a colony and later a dominion of the United Kingdom until 1949, on which year it entered the Canadian Confederation and became the nation's tenth province. Two referendums had to be organized - the first was proven inconclusive, and the second was won by only a slight majority of pro-Confederation voters (52.3% to 47.7%). Since joining the Confederation Newfoundlanders continue to see themselves as a unique group, and have maintained their own culture, cuisine and even a variety of English language.

For generations, cod fishery defined Newfoundland: it was a source of cultural and social identity, as most families were either directly involved in fishery or indirectly connected to it, by earning their livelihood as fish transporters or sellers, worked at fish plants and other fishing related businesses. For centuries Newfoundland fishermen used technology which allowed them to target specific species and ages of fish, map the area of fishing and limit the size of their catch. After Confederation Newfoundland fishermen were introduced to modern technology, such as the sonar and radar, which allowed them to fish deeper than ever and pursue fish on an unprecedented scale and compete with other nations that also fished in the region. However, these advances did irreversible damage to the stock of Northern cod: by fishing on larger areas and deeper scale the cod were depleted at the scale which did not allow the surviving fish to replete the stock fished each year; trawlers also caught an enormous amount of other fish, which although not commercially viable was invaluable to the area's ecosystem and severely disturbed the predator-prey relations among the fish. A significant amount of capelin were caught, on which the cod preyed - further fueling the speed of extinction of the remaining cod stock. In the summer of 1992, the Northern cod biomass - once the largest in the world - fell down to 1% of its previous level; in a dramatic attempt to save the cod the federal government declared a moratorium on cod fishery along the east coast, hoping that the cod population would recover and the fishing industry could be restored. It never did; the damage to Newfoundland's ecosystem was ineradicable, and the cod has not returned to Atlantic Canada. Cod fishery remains closed - it was the largest industrial closure in Canadian history - and over 35,000 fishers and people involved in fishing related businesses found themselves suddenly unemployed. The population of the province decresed by about 60,000, as many families were forced to leave the rock which borne them and hope for a life elsewhere.

It is to this rock that Quoyle comes with his children and aunt, to the post-Confederation but also post-cod Newfoundland, where those who remain try to survive. There he meets Jack Buggit, Tert Card, Beaufield Nutbeem and Bayonet Melville, and others cast away in the small Newfoundland town of Killick-Claw, where Quoyle lands a job for the local paper, The Gammy Bird. Quoyle is to report car wrecks and the shipping news - arrivals and departures of ships into the harbor. Clumsily at first but nonetheless carrying on, Quoyle begins to find his own voice as a reporter, make friends and acquaintainces in the tightly-knit community and begins to find himself in the harshness of Newfoundland's weather, and begins to discover the past of his ancestors, themselves castaways from Newfoundland to New York.
I have never been to Newfoundland, but I felt as if the book transported me there. Although Annie Proulx is an American, she moved to Newfoundland for research and spent time among Newfoundlanders, and wrote a book with a great sense of place (and its weather), populated with interesting and memorable people with great, quirky names. Although the story is a classic one - broken man leaves former life and begins anew - she sells it with her ability to transport the reader to the places she describes, and slowly draws him into her world. Newfoundland comes alive in The Shipping News, with its fog and wind and blocks of ice clinking in the bay, the boats cradled by the waters at one time and violently thrown aside the next; smoke rising from the chimneys, people reading The Gammy Bird and Quoyle's shipping news while sipping their warm drinks, each confronting their own problems, all united by the Rock they live on, loving and hating its rough caress at the same time.

Chapters are introduced with a description of a knot from The Ashley's Book of Knots, serving as an illustration of the themes of the book - Quoyle is a coil of rope; "A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on if necessary." Quoyle's first name is never given - he has been walked on all his life, and is like a coil of tangled rope. In Mockinburg he had few friends, and nobody took time to get to know him; Newfoundland is to literally be a place of his new self-discovery, but there everybody knows the Quoyles; Quoyle effectively becomes nothing more than an extension of his long dead family. Throughout the book, Quoyle has to untangle the knots made by others which tightened around him and made him a dangled mess and set free the person that he has inside of himself, and The Shipping News is an admirable story of this one man's struggle to overcome personal defeat and his own shy pursuit of happiness on a harsh Canadian island, where hope swirls in the air even amidst the winter storm.(less)

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Jul 06, 2008 John rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Magaret Atwood fans

Shelves: modern-fiction

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...

I have never seen the movie [I'm tol...more 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...

I have never seen the movie [I'm told that it's simply ok... nothing special], but had always intended to read this Pulitzer Prize winning novel - I am so pleased that I have made the time now and I am disappointed that I did not do so sooner. This, I am sure, will be a future feature on my multiple re-reads shelf.

Quoyle, Bunny, Sunshine, Petal, Agnis Hamm, Tert Card, Wavey Prowse, The Gammy Bird, No Name Cove, Beaufield Nutbeem, Jack Buggitt, Billy Pretty, Bayonet Melville, Grace Moosup and Mavis Bangs... these names alone conjour images of another world... a world of poetry, romanticism and imagination - the names are almost classic-cartoon in their meatiness.

Proulx carried me off to Newfoundland... I felt the isolation, I experienced the cold... I understood the emotions. It was all so skilful and beautifully written - it had me hooked - and it never let go for one second.

It was the description of Quoyle as a coil of rope which was followed with a quote from The Ashley Book of Knots saying
"A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on if necessary." that alerted me that this was something more than just another story.... it was something a lot more than that... it was several layers of many different stories.

There is no major plot in this book - it is forced along by the scenery, the seasons and the stunning-vivid characters and their extraordinary lives.

The ever-present one-line newspaper headline exclamations of Quoyle present us with excellent thought-gaps... apart from all else they are amusing too. "Newspaper reporter seems magnet for dead men!" epitomises the use of these and intonates the lack of seriousness with which Quoyle views himself and reflects how he views his life as a third-rate headline writer.

Your bookshleves are, believe me, incomplete without the inclusion of this book. I borrowed this copy from my local library but I am purchasing a copy tomorrow.... bravo... bravo. (less)

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Jul 02, 2007 Andy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: readownedloved

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 didn't spoil a...more

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Jul 03, 2007 April West rated it 5 of 5 stars

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

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Jul 01, 2008 Laura Jean rated it 5 of 5 stars

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.

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Feb 14, 2013 evie rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

For me, reading Quoyle's story reinforced what is important in a life, the insignificance of our material world, and how deep inside us we know what is truly valuable..

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Nov 30, 2008 Tara rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 mu...more

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Dec 16, 2007 Sera rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: hated-it, literary-fiction, 1001-books

Snore.

9 likes · like · see review

Aug 04, 2011 Angus rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: reviewed-and-blogged, pulitzer-prize, national-book-award

Original post at Book Rhapsody.

***

Intro

The Shipping News has a movie adaptation. When I first saw the movie poster in the early 2000′s, I wanted to watch it so badly. There’s Kevin Spacey and Julianne Moore! At that time, I didn’t know that it was based on a novel, and for some reason, I was not able to watch it, too.

Maybe because I was destined to read the novel first and download the movie later. Looking back, The Shipping News is probably the start of my addiction to books and my lifetime goa...more

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Apr 04, 2013 Maria rated it 5 of 5 stars

20130316 (Audiobook) ◊ I see that I first added "The Shipping News" to Goodreads back in 2008. The first time I read it in paperback, long before the movie came out, I couldn't wrap my brain around it at all. The characters and their experiences were so far outside my understanding of society and human nature that the entire book was nearly incomprehensible to me.

It must have haunted as well as confused me, though, because a few years after that I purchased the audiobook and gave it another go....more

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Mar 12, 2011 Joy H. rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: prizewinner-pulitzer, fiction, adapted-to-film, watched-film-too, read-a-while-ago

_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 member reviews:
"Clipped. Spare. But descriptive...more

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Oct 07, 2008 Julie rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 and various mos...more 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 and various mostly silent car rides. Enough to make you want to shout FIRE! and see if any of these characters does anything but look around slowly, gather up his belongings--carefully--and think about that phone call he wasn't now going to get to make about that boat motor. Sheesh! Then when something interesting was happening, or happened before but was just coming up in conversation, nothing much is made of it! It's all brushed under the rug as not being worthy of the words it would have taken to adequately describe. I don't give a rat's a$$ about the detailed description of the animal paintings on the children's cocoa mugs, but I would have liked to have heard how, exactly, Mrs. Yark managed to rescue them from the total destruction of her house and her entire town.

And the names--nearly every one of them strange, and (to me) irksome. I couldn't decide through the entire book how to pronounce Quoyle--with a hard C or with a Kw. Wavey reminded me of Wavy Gravy. Petal. Marty for a girl. Beety. Last names (often used alone) were bizarre as well. Nutbeem. Pretty. Quoyle (double whammy, first and last). Buggit.

One review called the book "atmospheric." I'll give it that, if by Atmospheric they mean more "cold pea soup, no crackers" than "Middle Earth with Orlando Bloom." Another (this one on the back of the book), "a lyric page-turner." Whaaaa?

Enough, glad its done; it drove me nuts. Good thing Proulx's Brokeback Mountain is a short story, because I still do want to read that. (less)

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Oct 10, 2008 Scott rated it 3 of 5 stars

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 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.
(less)

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Jan 14, 2008 Tony rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: I'm not sure I could recommend 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 for a book gro...more

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Aug 26, 2007 michael spencer harmon rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Everyone inductive, character-driven or humbled unto the brink of depression.

Shelves: unquestionable-favorites

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 somewhat hig...more

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Feb 05, 2010 Ron rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: general-fiction

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.

3 likes · like · see review

Nov 23, 2008 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 that's...more

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Feb 01, 2011 Tommyt rated it 5 of 5 stars

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.

1 like · like · see review

Aug 05, 2007 David rated it 1 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: mind-numbingly-boring

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 redemption through having writte...more

5 likes · like · see review

Sep 05, 2007 Jeremy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction, borrowed-from-someone

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 quitting mid-book with any...more

7 likes · like · see review

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Tackling the Puli...: The Shipping News (Annie Proulx; 1994)	12	47	Sep 12, 2011 01:08am
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About E. Annie Proulx

Also published as E. Annie Proulx
Edna Annie Proulx is an American journalist and author. Her second novel, The Shipping News (1993), won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for fiction in 1994. Her short story "Brokeback Mountain" was adapted as an Academy Award, BAFTA and Golden Globe Award-winning major motion picture released in 2005. Brokeback Mountain received massive c...more

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“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.” — 51 people liked it

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