Rating: 
Summary: Takes a while getting into, but Really worth the read.
Review: I picked up the book having read reviews, and having heard many good things about it. For the first 50 or so pages I felt it was slow, although not too slow that I stopped reading it. I know several people who stopped reading the book without getting deep into the story. It is worth it. Once the main character Quoyle moves to his ancestral home in Newfoundland, the book really takes a turn. The characters, with their humanity and idiosynchracies, make the story of people taking joy in being "alive" truly enjoyable.
Rating: 
Summary: getting lost in 'the shipping news'
Review: A book to laugh,cry and truly become emersed in.Ms Poulx has an incredible talent and an ability to take the reader on every step of the journey,not merely as a spectator but as a participant in the story.I began to feel a presence of the characters,and her description of the country gave me not only a visual sense of 'being there' but took all my senses to far-off Newfoundland.I have shared this book with many friends and it has just returned to me that I may read it once again and relive the joy that I recieved in first reading it.I have never felt strongly about any book,but 'The Shipping News'is the most magnificent story I have ever read,Thank you for the gift of your beautiful words Ms Proulx.
Rating:
Summary: Atmosphere and More
Review: I bought this book and read it on my recent trip to Newfoundland. Naturally, it came alive for me because I was reading her descriptions as I was experiencing the realities. Her writing is highly original -- stylistically her short sentences and phrases keep the narrative moving, her characters are flawed enough to be fascinating, and she has captured the physical beauty of the island. She captured the important transition that is happening there now--cod fishing gone, oil exploration going on. I was glad I got to visit while there were still vestiges of pre-petroleum Newfoundland and I am happy that she was able to capture the atmosphere so well in her novel. I found the book especially rewarding as I met and spoke with "Newfies". I plan on reading her other works. I'm glad I found a new author to explore!
Rating: 
Summary: The Shipping News
Review: Got the unabridged audio tape from the library. Tried to listen. Couldn't hack it. Gave it up after 1 1/2 cassettes. Dreadful dull. Traffic was more interesting. All inane prose, no action. Don't get it. A Pulitzer Prize? Why is relentless neglect of pronouns considered a literary style? Find it annoying. Reads like a George Bush speech.
Rating:
Summary: Dull, dull, dull
Review: This book reminded me of an awful Pultizer Prize winner (Martin Dressler......). The book drones on and on and on. Not much ever happens story-wise. Just one narrative after another about the characters' totally ordinary daily life. Plainly written, which is not a fault necessarily, except when the story itself is so blahhhhhh. Why do books like this win prizes?
Rating:
Summary: I Love this book!!
Review: "Shipping News" is in my all time favorite list. A story about interesting characters going into the wilderness to discover their family roots and identity. Unforgettable!
Rating:
Summary: A Reflection of Newfoundland
Review: The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx is a regional fictional novel that takes place in the isolated Newfoundland village of Killick - Claw. Quoyle, a middle aged man whose ancestors lived in Newfoundland returns there with his two daughters and aunt to start a new life and forget about his depressing, embarrassing past. The small town life of Killick - Claw, the starkly cruel coastline, the haunting history of Quoyle's ancestors, and a group of unforgettably unique characters who find there way into his life, help create a foundation for Quoyle to build on. Proulx is very successful in connecting all of these distinct parts and showing how they all help Quoyle start a new life. As the odd family of four starts figuring out how to fit into the culture, society, and natural setting of Killick - Claw, the reader learns to do the same with E. Annie Proulx's short, chopped writing style. The barebones lifestyle consisting of only the necessities that Quoyle learns to live is directly reflected in the writing style the author uses to portray it. Sentences are often not grammatically complete but always succeed in depicting Proulx's complete meaning. The actual text tells us: "A rough morning. Quoyle jumped down the steps. He would drive." We know, from these eleven words, what the setting is, who is involved, what he is thinking, and his plans for the morning. Without this reflective, no-nonsense writing style, Quoyle and his northern world would not be complete. Without Quoyle and Newfoundland to write about, this writing style might seem silly. As regional fiction, this novel does an excellent job of showing the importance of setting. After reading it I have an extremely clear impression of this particular section of Newfoundland coast, the points, the bays, the islands, the towns, and the isolated position of all of it. This impression of isolation is demonstrated by a description of the lack of real roads available to take Quoyle and his family from their old lives up to their remote destination in Newfoundland. On every rural road it is "Quoyle and the car in combat. Car Disintegrates on Remote Goatpath." The feeling of isolation seems to compress as they continue driving and fog descends. It is compressed so far as to seemingly turn into their destination, the lone house on the point where the aunt grew up. As they approach the house, "green of grass stain, tilted in fog," the isolation it represents seeps into them. The local setting consists of this half forgotten house, weather beaten and dilapidated, which Quoyle strives to make livable year round; the town where he covers 'the shipping news' in the local paper; the bay separating the two and causing him many uncomfortable moments concerning his distaste for boats; and the vast, rugged, ocean and coastline surrounding and intimidating him. This book makes me want to go to Newfoundland. I feel as if I could walk into the village, find my way to the 'Gammy Bird' newspaper office and greet all of Quoyle's co-workers by name. I would be prepared for the rural, isolated, aspect of the setting, and the idea that you take what comes at you and make the best of it for yourself.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant storyteller
Review: I read this book as part of a book discussion group with 15 other women. We do a book a month and there are always some of us who dislike the asssigned book, but not with this one. We all enjoyed it. I highly recommend this book, I have read all of E Annie Proulx' books and they are fantastic but this is my favourite.
Rating:
Summary: A Tale of Awakening in Newfoundland
Review: This is truly a unique novel, a tale of rebirth amidst the odd customs and harsh elements of Newfoundland. Protagonist Quoyle is an unremarkable man, father of two young daughters who must cope with the loss of his unfaithful wife (Petal) as the novel starts out. Petal is one of the most despicable characters I have ever encountered in modern fiction, and yet Quoyle continues his love for her long after she deserves it. I was a little perplexed as I read the book as to why Quoyle continued to hold such deep emotions for Petal, but I guess his low self-esteem, and her initial affection for him, left a lasting impact that enabled him to forget her horrible transgressions. Ultimately Quoyle, his aunt and his two young children decide to move to Newfoundland, where he was born and where his family history runs deep, to try and piece together their lives. They have dreams of moving back into a house on a point overlooking the bay that has stood deserted for decades. What he encounters there is portrayed in the Shipping News with compassion, tenderness, and a keen eye for detail by skilled novelist Annie Proulx. Quoyle's Newfoundland is full of offbeat characters with names like Nutbeem, Jack Buggit, Billy Pretty, Wavey and Tert Card. As he assimilates into the culture and gradually gets over his failed marriage, we see Quoyle develop as a writer, father and as a man until he gradually becomes ready to feel true emotions again. Ironically I read this novel soon after reading Anne Tyler's The Accidental Tourist, and while I found Macon's romance in Tyler's book to be a little forced and unromantic, Quoyle's rebirth in the Shipping News to me had a much more sincere undercurrent of true feelings. You cared what happened to these characters, as they seemingly cared about themselves and those around them. The novel's eccentric characters and the occasional absurd coincidences in the plot, for me, were the only things keeping this from ranking as a 5 star novel. Characters kept popping up on the water just in time for a rescue, or at precisely the right locations in the bay (days or weeks apart) to find separate parts of the same body, which to me seemed a little contrived. However, all in all, the book gave a very fresh look at a place few of us are familiar with, and told a story of a family with deep secrets and true to life emotions. Long after you forget some of the actions in the novel, you will remember its sense of place and the odd camaraderie of the characters.
Rating:
Summary: Humbled
Review: Unexpectedly beautiful prose that is often stunted, short, to the point. I don't think one semicolon exist in the entire book. But the writing works well because it goes so well with many of the characters, particularly the main character Quoyle who is at once less and more than an average man. His averageness and simplicity is likable. He at first seems stupid but nonetheless endearing. As one reads, though, he becomes average and then above average. His frailties are like all of ours: love, death, divorce. This book is written with much of the same simplicity as The Beach but it is the anti-Beach. Here there is beauty in everything the reader sees, while The Beach is a slow regression to madness. In The Shipping News it is the madness that is present in the outset, and through the story there is a coming together of decency, stability but with occasional moments of insanity thrown in both for laughs and seriousness. I think what makes this read unique is how the author is able to move through things as serious and as far reaching as child pornography while keeping the pace and humanness of the story utterly endearing and real. She deftly keeps sexual abuse and death intertwined throughout the story without grossing out the reader, in fact, the reader is held by the suspense as well as how endearing Annie's characters truly are. And it is the writing that keeps this together. It is the prose and the flatness with which the words are delivered. Every word, every sentence is in keeping with the characters and the story line. Further it is this balance to which keeps the mundane, the ordinary, and the purely outrageous. And the outrage takes the form of headless corpses and wild parties which get completely out of hand. And it was perhaps the coincidence that Quoyle finds both parts of the corpse on two different occasions to be a little too much for me. It tipped the believability scale but not seriously. This was, after all, not a detective story where such coincidences are strictly forbidden. This was for all intents, a love story. The love a father has for his children, the love for his dead wife that he can't let go of no matter how lacking it was, and the love to be found once again. So as a story of love, it too must be a story of loss. There is a certain amount of spiritual faith that is certainly brought to the table. There is the reward at the end of the long and horrible journey. It doesn't come crashing down on the reader, otherwise it would be trite. It subtly inches it way towards the conclusion, sometimes not so subtly as when you learn the two estranged widows suddenly are in bed and have made love. But had it been anything more than maybe that too would have been trite.
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