The Shipping News

Rating:
Summary: A charming and brilliantly written look at death and rebirth
Review: The Shipping News is a gripping, if somewhat slow-moving, tale about a man entering early middle age via the vehicle of abandonment. His relationship with a philanderous and unloving spouse ends tragically and his only response is to grossly shift latitude, with a distant relative and his children in tow, moving from the chaos and complexity of the United States to the weatherbeaten, harsh simplicity of Newfoundland. For mine, it is a fascinating tale of pruning of the soul back to the thick leafless branch and its slow rebirth through adversity and discovery. From an antipodean perspective, it was interesting to see the author include an oblique reference to a news item about the "Australian Lesbian Vampire Killings", which indeed occurred but a few miles from my home. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this tome and look forward to devouring a collection of the author's short stories in the near future. Dr Mark Walterfang

Rating:
Summary: Compelling, very rich description of life in Newfoundland
Review: The harsh sea-focused life among the tough residents of Newfoundland is a rare subject for U.S. audiences. Annie Proulx' novel, herself a part-time resident of the island province, makes its residents and life come alive with her rich prose. The words, accents and jargon take some work understanding, but it's well worth the effort. Your mind's eye can imagine the awful weather, the difficulty in performing everyday tasks, and the great pleasures of human contact and "breaks in the weather" can provide. We follow the experiences of one family, uprooted from a non-functioning marriage in the States to return to their ancestral home...and in the bargain, make a new life with new discoveries about themselves and others. Again, Ms. Proulx' great feel of the local landscape makes the reader become a "Newfie" as part of the experience. A Pulitzer Prize winner and must read for those with the curiosity about an obscure corner of North America.

Rating:
Summary: Let's Relook Ourselves in the Mirror
Review: Proulx's novel on people and life in Newfoundland has one of the best developed characters in all of fiction. Quoyle, "blessed" with a strange name, bad physical appearance and low self-esteem finds happiness and ultimately, learns to appreciate and be at peace with himself. A moving novel, Proulx charts the passage of a man who who overcomes a bad family history and nasty experiences with relationships, growing into someone more confident and able to see elements he was blind to (or made blind to) in the past. The whole idea of home as tied to a person is explored and Quoyle's journey back to his ancestral home and town is a confrontation of the unpleasantness of the past and a courage to deal with these ghosts. Quoyle's love for his children and his relationship with a woman in the small town (I forget her name) is nicely written and we get the idea that though Quoyle is portrayed as someone who is ordinary and simple, he is special in his own way. One of my favourite scenes in the book is when he dresses infront of the mirror after a bath and learns to look at himself in a different way, realising that the physical qualities he previously deemed as negative are positive when seen in another light. Proulx's novel teaches us about surface and inner beauty, about perception, how there're two sides to every coin. She teaches us to appreciate our "ordinariness" and find the unique in it. In doing so, we are made to relook at the people and things around us and learn to appreciate what we have overlooked previously. Her portrayal of the life and activities of Newfoundland is also an interesting insight into a region which seems pure and untouched. Honest, simple and unsentimental, Proulx's novel is a wonderful peice of literature and will stay with readers for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful writing, but misses the mark....
Review: The first thirty pages of the story are engrossing with lots of things happening and lots of great character development, but unfortunately the story then stalls to a turtle's pace. The entire middle of the book details the process of the weaving of the bonds between Quoyle, "the aunt", his daughters, and the cast of characters he encounters while rebuilding his life. Some interesting anecdotes are offered during this rebuilding phase, but it was overdone and tedious. Every nuance of Quoyle's healing is examined in painful detail, and the reader is repeatedly banged over the head with the premise that it takes a long time to heal from tragedy and loss.

Rating:
Summary: An odd but ultimately worthwhile little book
Review: I have to admit, when I first started reading this book, I came very close to giving up on it altogether, something which I rarely do. The early pages of the novel introduce Quoyle, the main character (whose first name is never revealed), describing him in terms which are so painfully pathetic that it is difficult to read. Quoyle is a failure in virtually everything he does, but a tentative friend ship with a man name Partridge lands him an occasional job at a newspaper. By the second chapter, however, Partridge is gone, leaving Quoyle to meet and surprisingly marry a woman who causes him nothing but pain. Two disagreeable children later, Petal is gone, and Quoyle's long lost Aunt convinces the family to move back to the ancestral Newfoundland. At first, the change of setting does little to improve the story--the sad conditions of this odd little family are almost too much to bear--but eventually, the novel comes into its own on Newfoundland's cold shores.

Once in Newfoundland, Quoyle undergoes a remarkable--if somewhat unbelievable--transformation. A half-hearted journalist at best, he blossoms in his new role as reporter of the shipping news. At the same time, he begins to learn how to act in social relationships, including an unlikely friendship with an aloof widow named Wavey. Although the other characters go through periods of growth as well--the Aunt comes to terms with her own tragic past, Quoyle's daughters become well-adjusted little girls, etc.--ultimately, the novel becomes the love story of Quoyle and Wavey, two figures who have had their hearts scarred by others. Finally, everything in the book is set against the backdrop of the fishing community, from the lifestyles of the characters to the quotes from The Ashley Book of Knots which precede every chapter. Although I still can't quite understand why this book won a Pulitzer Prize, it is definitely a worthwhile read.

Rating:
Summary: A Pulitzer Prize-winning Classic
Review: I pray that you have not seen the movie first! The beauty of this book is the author's writing style. This did not come through in the movie, making the movie very boring.

Annie Proulx managed to take bleak geography (Nova Scotia) with a dull subject (shipping) and make a wonderful novel out of it.

Bottom line: I loved this book and have read it three times. I would highly recommend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: My English Teacher would have killed me...
Review: I have never in my life seen in one book so many run on and sentence fragments in my life! "Sucked in a mouthful of tea." That's it! THAT is a sentence? If I wrote sentences like this in High School I would have failed English, and this book won the Pulitzer?
Other than that the story was slow, uneventful, bland caracters and a snail-paced plot. Even the movie was a horrid flop.

Rating:
Summary: Painfully written and boring
Review: The reviews of this book focus on Annie Proulx's 'Contemperary style of writting' in truth the writting style is anything but, it's confusing and most of all irritating. Reading this book was like trying to wade through a swimming pool full of syrup.

The plot had potential but the story was completly masked by the truly terrible writting. I can not for the life of me work out how this book won the Pulitzer Prize. (Friends in high places maybe?)

Rating:
Summary: Beautifully crafted, stunningly good novel
Review: 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 littered murky landscape of personal failure and Mockingbird, NY, where the story starts. But when the story shifts location - in the first of several deeply satisfying views of fair-handed fate - the choppiness of the words begin to work in concert with the setting. Words that sounded unnatural and coarse describing suburban life are perfect when describing the Newfundland coast line and the direct, honest, self-possesed people who live there. As the characters grow and gain depth, the language fits them more and more clearly.

Proulx describes a world that could hardly be more concrete and weaves in thrilling bits of magic. She doesn't water down an incredibly hard life but weaves in the certainty that it's a also a good life. In the end, she's created a lovely, satisfying book without the slightest hint of syrup, contrivance or manipulation. Lovely, lovely, lovely. I hated to see it end.




Rating:
Summary: The style, not the story
Review: While the style of Annie Proulx's prose gripped me immediately, the story never did. The prose is very carefully crafted and is worth taking time over. She writes very methodically using metaphor very skillfully and creatively.

Unfortunately, this is not a story that will move you too deeply. Sure, the characters can be related to and in particular Quoyle is depicted so clearly you feel like you are very involved in his life. But I finished the book wanting more and wondering what, in fact, the story had really been about.