The Shipping News
by E. Annie Proulx
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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 7414)
Read in January, 2008
The Good: 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 count...more
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Read in January, 2008
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
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Read in April, 2008
recommends it for:
Magaret Atwood fans
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 mo...more
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 mo...more
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Read in March, 2008
The beginning seemed a bit far-fetched at first, a lot of drama in a short amount of space, but once the frame is established the story finds an even pace and more realistic progression of activity. Proulx begins with a profile of an awkward and unattractive young man who covers his large chin when he’s nervous and self-medicates with food. Quoyle is a third-rate journalist for a small town paper in New York who finds his mate, an unfaithful party girl type, at a city council meeting he’...more
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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
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Read in January, 2008
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 bo...more
That said, having reread the book for a bo...more
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Read in February, 2008
Never the lack of quirky, astonishing characters in Annie Proulx's novels. Interesting to note that this is the first book in which I've ever encountered a child with Downs Syndrome and his portrait is tenderly rendered.
Follows a man's life from the emotional devastation of a dysfunctional marriage and the death of his wife and his parents. He starts anew, with young daughters and an aunt, in the place of his ancestors: the island of Newfoundland—with plenty of kick ass descriptions of th...more
Follows a man's life from the emotional devastation of a dysfunctional marriage and the death of his wife and his parents. He starts anew, with young daughters and an aunt, in the place of his ancestors: the island of Newfoundland—with plenty of kick ass descriptions of th...more
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Read in August, 2007
The Shipping News is a great novel, and Annie Proulx must be one of the best American writers alive today. The book is the story of Quoyle, a thirty-something man who begins the novel living a life of quiet desperation and shame. He's fat, homely to boot, and madly in love/enslaved to Petal, a completely unsympathetic character who stomps all over his insecure heart. Petal is dispatched in quick order.
I would have liked Wavey to be a fuller character. The few scenes in which she has d...more
I would have liked Wavey to be a fuller character. The few scenes in which she has d...more
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Read in June, 2007
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 Ne...more
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Read in March, 2008
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
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Read in January, 2005
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 l...more
Proulx writes in choppy short sentecnes. It's akward and clumsy language viewed against the l...more
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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 her...more
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 her...more
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Read in January, 2001
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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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 it 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 where...more
This book is revolutionary in it's use of language. She punctuates inventively and it 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 where...more
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Read in March, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone
I bought this book in a charity shop secondhand, as it's been one on my 'really ought to read that' list because it won so many awards and of course, E. Annie Proulx is the author of Brokeback Mountain. However the first few chapters were a bit bumpy, not because I didn't like the storyline, I did, it's just that the writing style is very choppy. The sentences are short and end in unexpected places. Once I got over this though, I really got into the book.
The main character Quoyle is someo...more
The main character Quoyle is someo...more
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Read in October, 1996
I love Annie Proulx's writing and this book just exemplifies her gift for description and well-drawn quirky characters. Also, she has a running theme in all her books of place being a big factor in bringing out a person's true self. In "The Shipping News" her main character the gentle and kind Quoyle, is a big, homely loser in a dead end job, who after the death of his two-timing wife, takes his two young daughters and travels with his aunt from New York to the land of his forefathers ...more
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Read in December, 2006
Listened ro audiobook from Recorded Books
Narrated By: Paul Hecht
Awards -
National Book Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Winner
The winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, The Shipping News is a stunning, big-hearted novel that beautifully blends pulse-thumping romance, fishing lore, and wildly eccentric characters. Meet Quoyle, a timid New York newspaperman whose two-timing wife has finally disappeared for good. Devastated, he retreats to his ancestral home on the ...more
Narrated By: Paul Hecht
Awards -
National Book Award Winner
Pulitzer Prize Winner
The winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, The Shipping News is a stunning, big-hearted novel that beautifully blends pulse-thumping romance, fishing lore, and wildly eccentric characters. Meet Quoyle, a timid New York newspaperman whose two-timing wife has finally disappeared for good. Devastated, he retreats to his ancestral home on the ...more
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Read in February, 2008
Really good, although it didn't toss me around quite as dramatically as Close Range's stories did. (Like how the appetizers are almost always better than the main course -- is that really how it is, or am I just not hungry by that point?) I suppose the storyline seems trite: hapless idiot moves to a place full of weatherbeaten authenticity and finds himself there. And the voice I still feel conflicted about: I can't decide whether I think she's trying too hard. Sometimes the determined feroc...more
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Read in June, 2008
Interesting book. I think in a lot of ways it is a good snap shot of life in the late twentieth century, where the average person felt that their lives could only have limited success and few grand adventures.
The plot wasn't the most powerful, but there was enough there to keep the story along. I guess it could be thought of as a character study, in which case it would have to be considered experimental, as Quoyle, the main character, is probably the dullest protagonist that I have read....more
The plot wasn't the most powerful, but there was enough there to keep the story along. I guess it could be thought of as a character study, in which case it would have to be considered experimental, as Quoyle, the main character, is probably the dullest protagonist that I have read....more
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recommends it for:
Everyone inductive, character-driven or humbled unto the brink of depression.
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...more
I received this (as I did a number of books for a handful of years) from my sister, who used to be somewhat...more
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