Rating: 
Summary: I am Jumping Ship
Review: I have tried and failed to become even remotely interested in this book for the past three weeks. Alas, I am giving up. The story is dull. The writing style unique, but overplayed. After 100 pages of terse, incomplete sentences with newspaper headlines masquerading as the protagonist's conscience, I have grown tired of the same literary device being employed without end. The story seldom goes anywhere, and, on the rare occasion that it does, it is at such a painfully slow pace that by the time the author is done with the all the irrelevant verbiage, the reader has lost interest. Indeed, it is mysterious how this novel became a best seller, a prizewinner, and the subject of a movie. I do not question the author's noble ambitions; I am just regretful that they aren't realized in this writing.
Rating: 
Summary: deft touches throughout
Review: Annie Proulx's deft touches bring this novel of Newfoundland to vivid life. She's a sharp observer who will make you sit up straight with her descriptions of what things feel like, what food tastes like, and the small, accommodating physical movements people make as they move through their days. There are secrets here, secrets of the family history, secrets in the damaged hearts. There is healing in the midst of ongoing struggle. Proulx's work is fiction at its best, as she writes with the freedom of an imaginative, curious writer who discovers and poignantly expresses, the inner lives of her characters. You will experience life as each of her characters knows it, and you will come to epiphanies as they do. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Captivating
Review: Annie's Proulx's writing about Newfoundland seems right on target. Being near the Canadian border, I sometimes hear stories or anecdotes of life in Newfoundland and she takes you right to the heart of the people and way of life there. The descritions of the ancestors who inhabited this vast, isolated island ring true. Her character development is sufficient without wallowing in a lot of detail. We know her characters, care about them and relate to them. Proulx's description of the landscape made me feel as though I were there on the fog shrouded shores, listening to distant foghorns and awaiting a far off ship to appear through the mist. She quite simply captures the simplicity of life and the complication as well, as relates to the hardship of living in such a place. Newfoundland is different, but you get a sense of having been there or wanting to be there; despite even the incestousness that permeates this place. It is though it awakens some inner thirst to be part of the population of Krillick Cove. I wish the story had gone one further. Though I'm not sure if a sequel could/would do this work justice, I would certainly read it. I was entralled with Newfoundland and her people. The scenery Annie Proulx painted in my mind was breathtaking. I enjoyed this book tremendously; as well as some written by the masters. Proulx's book is definitely on the same playing field with the greats. As an afterthought -- before reading this book, I checked out the reviews here at this Amazon website. One review noted that the names of the characters sounded silly or contrived. I beg to differ -- they added color and connection to the characters and certainly did not detract from my appreciation of this story. The names befitted the people. Wonderful read! Don't miss it!
Rating:
Summary: A Knot
Review: This book was more of a reality than most fiction books. It went through the real tradgedy of a man who was an outcast his whole life, easily fading into the shadows. He was married to a two-timing wife who met her untimely demise in a car accident, Quoyle, with the help of his Aunt, was left to raise his two daughters on his own in the harbor of Capsize Cove in Newfoundland. Annie Prolux used great imagery to describe the Newfoundland coast and even the many colorful characters emotions. I would definetly recommmened this book to someone else.
Rating:
Summary: Epic in the writing, the literature, the story, the message
Review: This extraordinary begins with tragedy in the life of Quoyle, a shambling, quiet, self-deprecating, always slightly-befuddled hack writer who moves with his confused and grieving daughters and a pragmatic aunt back to the derelict and damn-near-falling-into-the-sea family home in a noplace-specialNewfoundland harbor town. Once there, Quoyle finds a job writing the shipping news column for the local paper. In this odd and mostly quiet little town, the strange family finds enough stability to begin recovering from the terrors of their past lives.
But the novel is much greater in scope than just one man's story. It's also a bigger story of people coping with loss, abuse, and change. Annie Proulx is a consummate observer of human nature with all its quirks, and her writing skills are just as skewering in their precision. The Shipping News is a superb addition to a shelf of truly literary modern books.
Rating:
Summary: Best in Show
Review: I can't believe that there are a spate of mixed reviews for this novel. I discovered Annie's two short story collections, and bought this book based on the strength of her writing. How anyone could accuse Ms. Proulx of choppy writing is beyond me. Her character development is exhaustive, I felt I knew every line and crease on her characters faces. Her feel for the development of the storyline, and the interaction of the characters is far better than any of the top 10 hacks you'll see on the NY best seller list. When they chopped the bottom out of the junk, I was laughing so hard people stopped to ask me what I was reading. Ms. Proulx has a feel for the American heartland, whether you consider it to be Wyoming or Massachusetts. "The Perfect Storm" made it to the big screen. Annie writes the stories that make it possible for stories like that to have any relevance at all.
Rating:
Summary: The Shipping News = Bad News
Review: While Proulx's writing style is fluent and poetic, I found the short, choppy, newspaper-headline style difficult to follow, and annoying. The first few paragraphs, with their choppy, incomplete sentences left me baffled. While some authors will use an occasional literary trick to pull the reader along into the story, Proulx uses the same techniques throughout the entire book, making each sentence even more annoying than the last. I must admit, Proulx's literary devices do an incredible job of describing a harsh and desolate lifestyle and area. There was no doubt as to what the characters were experiencing, or how the weather felt. However, I found it difficult to sympathize with the moronic, pathetic lead character. The author never made clear exactly WHY Quoyle was treated so harshly by family, and I found myself sympathizing more with Quoyle's detractors than I did with Quoyle himself. I am still uncertain why this book received the critical acclaim it has received. It appears to this reader to be a disorganized, hack-written piece--the author tries too hard to stun us with her incredible story and writing skills.
Rating:
Summary: If you don¿t know how to tie any knots, tie many.
Review: Omaloor Bay, B. Beaufield Nutbeam, Quoyle, Billy Pretty, Killick-Claw, Capsize Cove, Flour-Sack Cove, Bayonet and Silver Melville, Misky Bay, Jack Buggit, Tertius Card, Beety, Flying Squid Gift & Lunchstop, Gaze Island, Mavis Bangs, The Gammy Bird. If the cover art depicting a house being towed along the ice doesn't alert you that this might be an imaginative tale, these proper names that author E. Annie Proulx chooses signal a creatively fecund mind. What on earth kind-of-place must Newfoundland be? The hapless newsman Quoyle leaves behind a tragic and unfulfilled life in upstate New York, and with a domineering, secretive aunt, steers his way to ancestral stomping grounds on the shores of Newfoundland. Here the quirky Quoyle fits right into a community of goodhearted fisherman, boatbuilders, carpenters, and assorted oddballs. Newfoundland provides for Quoyle, a new found life. Over the course of a year, he finds acceptance and vibrancy in a new community for his family. As juxtaposition, Quoyle's good friend, Partridge, seemingly a guy with all the luck, starts up his new life in Los Angeles, a material world of electronics and backyard barbeques that couldn't seem more foreign to Newfoundland. And ultimately less promising. Proulx prefaces each chapter with a drawing or quote from the Ashley Book of Knots, (by Clifford Ashley 1944). The drawings are detailed and correct, and the maxims preface each chapter in an interesting and fitting way. Perhaps as quick a read as you'll ever have through 337 pages, (and it could have gone much longer), The Shipping News is a flavorful work of Maritimes dialect, fanciful storytelling and hope for the downtrodden everyman.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Overrated Book I Have Ever Read
Review: I think it is a shame that such a self-conscious, pretentious and contrived book has ever gotten the attention this one has. The dialogue rings so false that it's just laughable, each character speaking with virtually the same clever "quirkiness" which soon becomes completely draining. I am dumbfounded that readers do not see through the phoniness of this writing. I hope Ms. Proulx's other books are not this abysmal or eventually the world will wake up and see through this sham. There are so many better things to do with one's time. . .
Rating:
Summary: I don't know...
Review: Annie Proulx's jagged and unsettling prose is the most singular aspect to The Shipping News. This serves as a vivid and powerful metaphor for the hard-edged Newfoundland fishing community of Killick-Claw. The Shipping News was a rare book for me. I found myself by turns hateful, apathetic and ultimately enthralled with this novel. After a well-deserved second reading I'm still grappling with huge swaths of the text. There are sentences in here that you just don't want to let go of, and so it becomes a real struggle to move from one page to the next. It is a wonderful book though, and a tough one to write about, so I'll just say that it is definitely a must for anyone who enjoys literary fiction or magical realism vis-à-vis Robertson Davies. Also reminiscent of Steinbeck's Cannery Row. Four stars seems about right.
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