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.