Rating: 
Summary: Exciting and uplifting
Review: This book teaches you how lifer is for the people who live in a country area. Annie's way of producing the characters is great!:)
Rating: 
Summary: This is the worst book I ever tried to read!
Review: I just don't get it. Maybe it is a sign of my literary ignorance. I tried to read it and listen to it, but it was too painful to endure. For me, the book had no redeeming qualities - not the characters, the plot (or lack thereof), or the writing style. A complete waste of time.
Rating: 
Summary: Amazingly inventive.
Review: Proulx did a great job of guiding us through the lives of the the misguided.
Rating:
Summary: Where you want to be
Review: In her very special words, she'd shown us a miracle out of Newfoundland. I'm very impress by her writtings and had heard a lot about it. When I actually brought the book, I was doubting whether it would ever be worth it. But I' sure, it's like a secret that everybody wants to love it. Her short lapidary sentence shows us a small pace instead of quick steps into the story. Annie made us think, enjoy and surmise the beauty of the countryside. As for the story, it interacts with the natives, the people stayed so long that they have so many tales to go on about. Annie's novel is a documentary of Newfoundlander. This must be preserved as one of the most important historical facts for the coming.I also recommend heartsongs and other stories by Annie. E. Proulx, a beautifully wry tale on a kitchen party.
Rating:
Summary: bitter, sweet, and salty
Review: E. Annie Proulx fully captures the tortured emotions of her main character, Quoyle, as he moves back to his family's native Newfoundland. It is a richly wrought, beautifully captured story of love lost, of making a home in an inhospitable place, of finding solace. Proulx's eye for detail works so well with her economy of words, and her prose reflects the environment in which the story is set. A remarkable book.
Rating:
Summary: How can anyone not love this book?
Review: I find it amazing that this book has attracted so many less than positive reviews. I think this is the best book written in English in the 'nineties. Sure, some people might get irritated by Proulx's tendency to list but that does not bother me at all. It is by far the best of her books.
Rating:
Summary: a masterpiece of prose
Review: There are few works of contemporary fiction as masterful as this book. The irony is, and it is one that Quoyle might appreciate, that the author dismisses it as a 'toss-off', in between her more serious work, such as Accordion Crimes. Now she may just be pulling our legs... Nevertheless, Proulx is perhaps the most skilled crafter of English prose alive today. No mere empty stylist such as the lions of Britain such as Martin Amis, her language is inextricably linked to the physical and spiritual world her characters inhabit. And nowhere is this clearer than in the course of this novel. Quoyle stumbles almost blindly and ignorantly through life until he happens upon the Shipping News, and we stumble with him. The awkwardness of the prose frustrates us, as we are frustrated with him, until slowly we discover his consciousness budding into life. With it comes the grace and poetry of a writer revelling in a world that is unexpectedly revealed. Deceptively simple, deft and miraculous, there are few novels today that teach us as much about the world and our place in it, the language that we use, and the potential for joy in the least suspected places.
Rating:
Summary: Don't let the first 50 pages fool you; this is a great book.
Review: It may start out a bit slow but ol' Annie doesn't let us down. An exquisitely written novel that leaves you with the hope that this isn't the last we've heard on the life and times of our man Quoyle.
Rating: 
Summary: Metaphors Galore!
Review: E. Annie Proulx uses an irritating amount of methaphors and similies in the first few chapters. The story is engaging and somewhat overcomes the writing.
Rating:
Summary: Subtlety, thy name is Quoyle
Review: before i knew it, i was wrapped up in these characters' lives. what a nice book! a TRULY nice book. now, i can't argue that john Irving (my favorite) spins a nice yarn as well, but what was there not to like about Quoyle, the aunt and the supporting characters like Billy Pretty and his tale? simply one of the great books that lets you ride along its waves....if you need 334 pages of DIE HARD, don't read the shipping news
| 
