Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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30 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
poetry in prose.....just wonderful, 8 Aug 2001
I can't believe it has taken me so long to discover 'The Shipping News'. Not just a soul enhancing story but a beautiful and refreshing narrative style. I have never come across a writer like Proulx, her mastery of prose and particulary description is unforgettable. From the first page I knew I was delving into something remarkable.Reading this I was absoultely transported to life in Newfoundland. The cold, the ice, the wind and the danger all penetrated my imagination and I was frozen stiff reading most of it! A tragedy with a loveable oaf as a hero, the unforgettable stalwart aunt with her grief and her memories, children with a hope for the future away from modern times. Escape into a harsh world which demands courage and resolution, but the rewards and the education the Quoyle family receive is touching and satisfying. A tale of loss, history, roots, grief and new beginnings. Never does Proulx weave her plot through rose tinted spectacles and soft nostalgia, rendering this novel as among the best I have ever read. There is a very naked truth in this novel and it will grind you hard. I'd call it catharsis. Read this. It's an exploration.
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Quietly celebrating the unglamourous and imperfect, 7 Jun 2006
Other reviews swing wildy between perfect 5 and damning 1. I'll settle for a contented 4. Only because it took a while to get into the book. Believe me: it's worth it.
Agree that it's hard to sympathise with Quoyle (our, um, hero) in the early chapters. Not the heroic type at all... wounded by his father's totally undisguised favouritism towards his spiteful brother. Overweight and ugly. Lacking self confidence, self control... Nor the clichéd anti-establishment anti-hero. In fact dull, dull, dull......
But hang on. Isn't this every man? Who among us is perfect in mind and body? Fat and unsure of ourselves. Tall, gangly and introspective. Tough on the outside, vulnerable and drawn towards self-destructive behaviour on the quiet.
That's how the book draws you slowly in. Characters may have improbably names, but they're more real than most perfect size 8, gym-toned fiction you'll ever read.
The small kids are drawn so well. Such a rarity in an adult novel.
The island and the sea are characters in themselves. Newfoundland, its inlets and offshore islands, abandoned settlements, pragmatic architecture. Punished by - and yet so dependent on - the sea, like the cruel parents that seem to crop up all too often in the book. Buffeted even more by wavering subsidy from remote government that really cannot see through the fog to get a proper picture of life on the the Rock. By the vagiaries of globalisation....
Sounds depressing. But ultimately a redemptive, quiet, gorgeously imperfect celebration of community and finding the inner strength to accept yourself, for all your flaws and the stuff you found it hard to deal with. I'll read it again and again.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Arr - A Fine Book, 23 Sep 2006
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 obnoxious, self-obsessed bully with no obvious redeeming qualities while his brother is a self-centred, poisonous rat. After stumbling from one trade to another, Quoyle more or less settles on journalism as a career - starting out with the Mockingburg Reporter. He later meets and marries Petal Bear. (Despite his somewhat unorthodox appearance, Quoyle is as prodigious downstairs as he is in the chin department). Initially, things go well : their first month together is genuinely happy, but the following six years bring Quoyle two daughters and plenty of misery. Although Petal has a great interest in sex, she tends to pursue that interest with people who aren't her husband...
Things change dramatically for Quoyle in his mid-thirties. Following the death of his parents in a suicide pact, he meets an aged aunt (Agnis Hamm) for the first time. Although unable to attend the funeral, she arranges to come down and collect his father's ashes. However, by the time she arrives, Quoyle is also a widower : Petal dies in a car accident that also takes the life of one of her many boyfriends. Shortly before running off, Petal had also sold their daughters to a very dodgy photographer for $7000...fortunately, the police managed to arrive at the photographer's apartment before anything to questionable had happened. Having lost his job - leaving nothing for him in Mockingburg - Aunt Agnis suggests moving to the ancestral Quoyle homestead in Newfoundland. Quoyle, Agnis and the two daughters set off for Quoyle point and, although in need of some repair, the old house is still standing. There's also the promise of a new job : writing the shipping news for the Gammy Bird, the newspaper based in the neighbouring town.
This is a book I'd put off reading for a while. Having won, among other prizes, the Pulitzer I was expecting a `challenging' book without a great deal of humour. I couldn't have been more wrong : the book is very easily read and - while it isn't always cheerful - there is plenty of humour in it. Aunt Agnis is a great character - I was particularly impressed how she dealt with her brother's ashes ! Quoyle has a slight tendency to think in headlines, especially when he feels he's somehow said or done something wrong. Highly recommended.
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