Rating: 
Summary: Mature reading maybe an acquired taste
Review: This is the third book or so I have read by Proulx, and if I could figure out how to pronounce her name I'd be as happy as a Newfie Oyster. I will buy anything she writes! Yep, she does write about men a lot and sounds like a man writing about men (listen up Mailer). I am intrigued by her references to gays and lesbians among such arcane topics as skiff building. She has earned the title to "Juxtaposition Annie." Her characters are believeable I guess, although Quoyle (no first name like the Afghans fighters have one name) rings a bit too hollow and naive for me. The names she conjures up are spectacular and the quaint idiosyncracies like wholesale incest of New Foundland-lers, are fascinating if not unquestionably true to life. I could go on but what the heck, she's been critiqued by some of the best--not neccesarily all the people who write herein-- and not found wanting. I give her five thumbs up, or whatever Ebert says. (...)I am hooked for life.
Rating:
Summary: This book was fantastic
Review: Whoever says this book is boring is just plain stupid. The characters and the story line are remarkable. The character of Quoyle is awesome and when the movie comes out, I'm sure Kevin Spacey will do a great job.
Rating: 
Summary: BORING
Review: Just because her book reads like a screenplay dabbled with preposterous similes ("fingernails like bowls of souvenir spoons" and "the bay crawled with whitecaps like maggots seething in a broad wound") does not make Annie Proulx a unique stylist and a great writer. The comparisons defy comprehension, and one has to ponder over them, finding nothing, and move on, blaming him/herself for missing something. The prose is very artificial, lacking the smoothness of a practiced writer's terse sentences. Hidden beneath the contrived paragraphs is just another conventional love story about two widows trying to find reasons to love again (Yuck!). Then there is the setting: a small town in Newfoundland, where the inhabitants drink, work on boats, and talk like pirates. This book is a bad work of art and an insult to its readers. If, for some strange reason, you enjoy reading this book, try also Carol Shield's Stone Diaries.
Rating:
Summary: Love - Hard and Easy
Review: The two main themes of this novel are love and work. Quoyle, the principle character, after a false start of the hard kind, learns that there is an easy kind of love, which is just as splendid and wondrous as the hard kind. After a false start with Petal Bear, he finds smooth going with Wavey. This uplifting story helped win 5 stars from me.Among the reasons I gave "Shipping News" 5 stars, is the continuity present in the novel. Do not confuse the fact that the author uses a 'gimmick' to unify the novel. In "Shipping News" a knot is provided from time to time with a definition or brief social history of the knot to 'tie' the story together (pun intended). To the contrary, despite the gimmick of knots, it is Quoyle's dogged and tender nature, such as toward his daughters Bunny and Sunshine, which compels us. Quoyle's trek with his Aunt Agnis and daughters takes them from New York state to Newfoundland where he finds work reporting on the shipping news for the local newspaper the 'Gammy Bird.' The demanding and stark landscape provides a dangerous backdrop for the sparsely told unfolding love story.
Rating: 
Summary: Not bad
Review: Good book. Not a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Remarkable
Review: Quoyle has reached a crossroads in his life. His wife has died in a car crash while running off with another man, his children are missing. Quolye follows the trail of his dead wife's last days and manages to reclaim his two daughters from the man she sold them to. Life has dealt Quoyle one bad hand after another; from dead end jobs to a two timing wife, it's what he believes he deserves in this life. Enter the Aunt! With stories of Quoyles family in their native New Foundland, she sparks an interest in living a life totally foreign to anything Quoyle has ever known. It takes very little persuasion to talk him into packing the family up in the beat up old station wagon and setting off for the wilds of Canada. Quoyle is amazed to find that his ancestral home is a lonely old house, in major need of repair, situated on an isolated rocky point over looking the ocean. Digging deep into his inner resources he amazes himself by finally finding a place in life where he fits, a job he actually does right and a chance to love again. This story is filled with quaint and interesting people and places. I felt like I was living right there with Quoyle and his family, feeling the bitter cold and rejoicing in the wild and oft times treacherous ocean. Annie Proulx is a wonderful descriptive author and I certainly hope to read more of her work. A definite 5 star rating in my opinion!
Rating: 
Summary: An ode to the small communities
Review: The Shipping News will soon be coming out as a movie, starring Cate Blanchett, so I suppose you could just wait until then and find everything out from watching the movie version. But if you did, you would miss out on an enchanting read, and one that one the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1994 along with The Irish Times International Prize and others. This novel is the story of Quoyle, who along with his two young daughters, Bunny and Sunshine, travels to Newfoundland after the death of his awful wife. Quoyle settles in his ancestral home along with his Aunt Agnis, and begins work on the local paper, the Gammy Bird. Through Quoyle's interaction with the people he meets, we come to know the intricacies of the local community - the personalities, the history, the foibles. This book is really a paean to small communities, and you come to understand the attraction that living in a small, remote town has for some people. I was sorry when this book ended that I would no longer be sharing the lives and times of Quoyle, Wavey, Aunt Agnis and the rest of the readers of the Gammy Bird.
Rating:
Summary: Great reading
Review: This book is stunning. It is thought-provoking and digs into the human spirit. It is absolutely amazing. The way the author incorporates the 'String' and the 'Knots' makes this book even more interesting. The average reader thinks 'string and knots, wow', but the author magnifies the string and knots through out the book. This book is amazing, buy it today, you wont regret it.
Rating:
Summary: Read it
Review: I enjoyed this book very much. Ms. Proulx descriptions of people, locations, and situations were wonderful. Sometimes her delivery is almost too poetic for me, but it didn't take away from the overal effect. It was an engaging book from beginning to end, full of detail so rich that I swear I've actually been to Newfoundland! I'm looking forward to the movie in January! I enjoyed the story more and more with each passing page, so it's my opinion that others who offered their opinions WITHOUT READING THE WHOLE BOOK or, worse yet, DIDN'T LISTEN TO THE AUDIO BOOK(!) completely, shouldn't be offering reviews. (If you didn't read the whole thing, you missed out on a good book!) Ms. Proulx is a great talent and I look forward to reading more of her work!
Rating:
Summary: Good Read
Review: I loved reading the book The Shipping News. I found that I could relate very well to what the characters were feeling. I could especially relate to Quoyle. He let people walk all over him and he had low self-esteem. Everyone has felt the way he did at some point in his or her life. The characters in the book also seemed very ordinary. They were like everyday people. They didn't have a fairy tale life. In fact, Quoyle's life was very hard on him. He encountered a lot of tragedies. I also liked the fact that the people in the book had problems too, and that not everything worked out so perfectly sometimes.
Proulx was creative in the way she wrote her book. Her carefully plotted use of words gave great detail to the story. The words, I found, were vivid and evoked many detailed descriptions of the setting and of the landscape. Her choice of words also gave me detailed descriptions of the characters. Some of the sentences were hard to understand though because they were just fragments. But contained in these sentences fragments were powerful descriptions. They were short and to the point and only involved words that were important to understanding the character at that time. The choppy sentences structure was also representative of Quoyle and how his life wasn't complete either. The fragments allowed me to get inside the character's head and know what they were thinking and how they felt. Knowing the feelings of the characters was important for me because then I was able to see the changes each character had undergone in the end.
I admit that the book struck me as kind of unusual at first, but that's what made it so interesting. That it wasn't just another book. Although it isn't very adventurous it had a lot of good points about human nature. Some people are outcasts like Quoyle and some people, like Petal Bear, are just cruel. Out for themselves and themselves only, not caring who they hurt along the way. It was the reality of everything that happened that made this book so touching. Quoyle was the shy, overweight guy who always got walked on. Then he happens to meet a woman who loves him for who he is and it changes his perspective of himself. Once you get past the hard to understand sentence fragments, it turns out to be a great story. I would definitely read more books by Proulx.
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