Rating: 
Summary: about something
Review: A lot of reviews said this book wasn't about anything. It was definately about something....maybe not something much or something exciting, but about a style of living, a way of life, a dynamic of an area, and how life kinda just happens and rolls along this way and then that way without much guidance. Quoyle deals with what comes up...he hopes for what he wants and takes what he gets. The writing style was extremely refreshing and enjoyable as well as the imagery. Good luck Quoyle and kids....you'll need it, but I know you'll manage.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: I had to put it down the first time, but the second time I really took to it.
Rating:
Summary: Yup
Review: Develoment of character is truly insightful. Story is extremely unique....Great book, read it.
Rating:
Summary: Slow-paced yet wonderfully executed...
Review: NOTE: This reviews may contain crucial spoilers.Written similarly to Faulkner's works, with unfinished sentences and great symbolism, Proulx's writing actually evolves over time. Quoyle, the main character, is your classic slob who does nothing but work for a living. He is what many would term a 'loser', and would be easily forgotten in the quick bustle of the world. Annie is wonderful at describing his dreary, simplistic life with his wife, Petal, whom doesn't love him. "... head shaped like a Crenshaw, no neck..." He's your typical bumbling fool, as one would say. With a life in shambles, Quoyle's prostitute wife dies, leaving him with two children. For the life of me, I could not understand how he loved this woman, but I guess it's typical of his character. He needs to be loved, and even though she didn't necessarily care for him, he believed she did. How ironic, that when he moves to Newfoundland with his aunt and two children, he is given the job of reporting on the islands car wrecks. This is very cynical of the author, for his wife was killed in a car crash. He then must do the Shipping News, which lists the boats coming in and out of the harbor at Killick-Claw, the small town. "Your wife was killed in an auto accident. What does Jack ask you to cover? Car wrecks, to get pictures while the upholstery is still on fire and the blood still hot." Jack is the man I really hated in this book, yet I admired him. Why? He gave all his reporters assignments that touched them personally. Like in the case of Petal's fatal car crash. Yet, even though this may seem contemptuous, I believe in some deep region of his heart, he is actually trying to get them to face their fears. In this small, quiet town, someone must recover for the inhabitants what has been lost. I do not know if this was done deliberately or not, but as the book progresses, and Quoyle's character becomes more apparent, the writing style changes. Soon, those broken sentences turn to normal reading. Quoyle begins to lead a normal life. As a last way to convey irony in her novel, the home that housed the aunt and her nephew, was blow away and drowned. After all the drowning that had occurred in the novel, neither Quoyle nor his aunt died. Unfortunate? No. Having worked so hard to escape the past life, this man deserves another chance. E. Annie Proulx has effectively created a story that chronicles a troubled man's life, and her style of simplifying the text as he matured was truly inspirational.
Rating: 
Summary: Plainsong - with cold water
Review: Here I go again, out on a limb - or is that plank? As I said of Kent Haruf's "Plainsong," this book is too "artsy" for me. I borrowed the unabridged audio version from my local library system (Thank Goodness!) for a recent long car trip. What we have here is a failure to communicate or to adequately introduce characters - they just suddenly appear and disappear in a fog of what the author must consider "beautiful new prose." After re-winding several times to answer the question, "Now who is THIS?" I hit the Eject button midway through Tape 1/Side 1 and drove on through the beautiful North Dakota Plains in silence.
Rating:
Summary: Good Story, Great Writing
Review: I found Proulx's writing to be top notch. She is a competent literary writer who has found her own voice. It was a pleasure to learn from her clear skill and style of writing. However, the story wasn't very compelling for me. Despite the excellent scenery she paints of Newfoundland, I find her characters are still yet underdeveloped. I do like Proulx's themes, humor, and her ideas. To be certain, there are more things good to say about this book than bad, and I am glad I read this book. With so much other untalented fluff out there, this is a gem.
Rating:
Summary: and the point is...?
Review: this book seemed such a waste of time on the part of an obviously able author. Yes, she conjured up wonderful landscape and characters. Yes she has a... let's say interesting... way with sentence structure which might be viewed as Literature by those who think chopping a senetence up means the author is Very Clever. But if you're going to invest that skill and time, do something with it for goodness sake. I was left at the end of the book thinking ...AND???? What was the point of wading through all that, just for that? This is only elevated above Mills and Boon status by the poncey critics who blather on about it in the media.
Rating:
Summary: Affected prose
Review: Imagine that for one whole week--for every meal, three meals a day, sevens days of that week--you had nothing to eat but Crab Rangoon. That's what reading this vaunted clown's prose is like. I put it down after 50 pages.
Rating:
Summary: Well worth reading
Review: This work is not flabbergastingly brilliant, true enough, but it is a very good read. I found the story interesting and I related to the main character. There were points where I found myself thinking "I understand how he feels here." At other times I thought "Wow, I never looked at it that way before" and I felt much better about how I felt about my self as well as things that have happened around me. I would certainly put this on my list of books that are worth reading. I really enjoyed it.
Rating: 
Summary: An Insight into Newfoundland
Review: The Shipping News wonderfully illustrates the landscape and life of Newfoundland. The bleekness and bitter cold of Newfoundland serves as a backdrop to this dark comedy. Proulx brings out the culture of the area by carefully crafting the dialect within the conversations. The 3-star rating is due to the difficulty I had involving myself in the book. I did not find the book openly invites the reader.
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