Rating: 
Summary: WHAT prize did this win?
Review: I bought this soon after finishing "Postcards," which I thought was very well done, if a bit dark in tone. I finished "Shipping News" wondering if the same person wrote both books. At times the narrative seemed to me stilted; I was too often concious of the fact that I was reading a story instead of losing myelf in that story.I kept waiting for the good writing to commence... the bottom line: read "Postcards" instead
Rating: 
Summary: Truly a vicarious experience not to be forgotten!
Review: If this book had a pulse, it would be an erratic yet harmonious one. With syntax that will keep you on your toes, Proulx weaves a story as unlikely yet believable as any Pulitzer Prize Winning Literature ought to. If you're like me, her characters will become intermingled in your every day thoughts while the setting envelops all of your senses. This one you'll keep on the shelf long after you've read and re-read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Hated it!!!!
Review: I found this book to be absolutely awful! I took it with me when I went overseas & had there been any other English-language book around, I never would have finished it!!!! I can't believe this book won any awards....I disliked the characters, found the grammer & writing style atrocious. All in all -- a real loser!
Rating:
Summary: the best.
Review: The Shipping News is a book full of beautiful language and phrases that please the mind - it is an arty read that often draws emotion from its imagery. At the same time, the book is populated with rich characters whose lives intertwine into a rolling, marvelous plot. I often looked up from the book only to discover that I had stopped breathing altogether. My suggestion: find a copy, nestle in, and savor at a leisurely pace.
Rating:
Summary: If only I had the option of giving it less than one star...
Review: I am an avid and open-minded reader. I enjoyed reading just about every type of book that exists and, until "The Shipping News" came along, I was proud to say that I had never put a book down half way through. Those days are over though! I struggled through this book, thinking "It won a Pulitzer Prize, it has to be good!" and "John Travolta is going to be in the movie, it has to be good!" but I finally realized that only a rewrite was going to make this a good book. I found Quoyle to be annoying and stupid. But, even more than that, I found the poor use of the English language to be so distracting that half way through the book I gave up. After reading the reviews, I was astonished to find that people actually enjoyed this book! I've read many "difficult" books but this was beyond "difficult"; it was impossible!
Rating:
Summary: Don't put off reading this any longer.
Review: It's been a long, hot summer in Mississippi, but while reading this book I felt much cooler! I loved the odd character names and places and the overall suspense. What a great book!
Rating: 
Summary: I liked it...and for a number of (personal) reasons:
Review: There's enough ambivalence to keep the characters roaming around in your mind long after the book has been finished, e,g, "...Why did Proulx introduce that event?"..and .."what does it have to do with anything?" Yes, the book's emotional environment is most certainly "gray", but when light (oftentime in the form of humor) is introduced, the enjoyment, however brief, becomes the greater for it.
Rating:
Summary: An inside look at this wonderfully harsh province.
Review: I really enjoyed the The Shipping News although I found much of the sentence structure to be slightly difficult to read. The wonderful descriptions and characters made up for that. It was like a return to the past for me--having lived in Newfoundland for 2 years in the 1960's. I can hardly wait for the movie version!
Rating:
Summary: An Unlikely Hero
Review: Reading E. Annie Proulx is taking a walk in the world of the familiar. The hurdy-gurdy old-time carnival poetics of Proulx's work make it more akin to reality, and all of the unseen vital forces swirling around it, than any photograph. The //Shipping News// is one of Proulx's best works so far. Not only the books characters, but its objects, locales and narratives are presented in a close up voice lending them an almost tangible quality. Quoyle is the unlikely hero. Both he and his ancestral homeland of Newfoundland are flawed with countless foibles and difficulties, the offbeat harmony of which make them both strikingly attractive, more-so than any catalog of perfections. Just out of the bath Quoyle surveys his bulky self in the mirror: "He guessed he was at some prime physical point. Middle age not too far ahead, but it didn't frighten him. It was harder to count his errors now, perhaps they had compounded beyond counting or blurred into his general condition." Proulx's //Shipping News// regards flaws, failures and mistakes not so much as problematic- but as building blocks for the jumbled up, amazing works our lives become in the living. Quoyles fortunes and misfortunes are played out in an uncanny kind of quotidien drama while we share in his discovery of the raw landscapes and mythic histories of his family turf Newfoundland. "The Newfoundland in this book, though salted with grains of truth, is an island of invention." This is 'invention' like the tall tales of grannies everywhere: refabricated and evolved so much no one really much remembers the /real/ truths anymore...or whether they were so real after all.
Rating:
Summary: A charming book thats rather funny.
Review: This book is very detailed and funny. The characters are well worked and realistic. Sadly I found myself wondering how bland and dull the life is in Newfoundland. It does not deserve 5 stars as I have read better books. But I would recommend it to anyone looking to break away from more convensional subjects, as the plot seems so sublime it is original.
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