Rating: 
Summary: Engaging and Brilliant
Review: There's a Quoyle in all of us. No matter how hard we try, we can never live down our own personal horrors. That's what makes The Shipping News so compelling. It's a novel with characters one can relate to, and is written in language that ebbs and flows like the tides of the Newfoundland Proulx so brilliantly describes. A must read for everyone who loves novels, period.
Rating:
Summary: A complex novel with simple truths
Review: This is the best novel I've read in years. It has the richness of Faulkner and Twain but with thoroughly modern characters. It's about a man, Quoyle, who is big and awkward and unlucky in love. He moves his family to Newfoundland for reasons you'll have to discover yourself. And while he's there he discovers a simple truth about life that is maybe all we can hope for: love doesn't have to hurt. These characters will stay with you, and texture of Newfoundland is described with such richness that you'll think you've been there. Oh by the way, there's a lesbian character, but I doubt the Pulitzer committee even noticed
Rating:
Summary: A true gem
Review: Please bear with the first 30 odd pages; they are an anomoly to an otherwise beautifuly crafted book. This is a story that not only pulls on your heartstrings but also allows you to believe that there is hope for Everyman/woman. I love this story
Rating:
Summary: Classic for the 21st Century
Review: The Shipping News is one of the few books of the last twenty years or so which will be read as a classic in the twenty-first century. Its not about computers, rockets, futuristic cities, the 'world wide web', telecommunications or the coming of digital television. It is about a lonely man, going back to his roots and discovering his past to build a future life while finding love and career along the way. Beautifully writen and sharply insightful, the novel deals with themes as timeless as those in past centuries and future millenia
Rating:
Summary: Tragedy is not-tragedy in this book of an ordinary man.
Review: This is another in a long line of "shipping" related works
that have been chosen for National Book Awards in the past decade or so (e.g., The Middle Passage, Spartina, Ship Fever and Other Stories). Perhaps the committee seeks the spirit of Melville or Conrad? At any rate, this clever
and funny novel charts the course of Quoyle's family,
who find that tragedies can liberate, and ordinariness
can mean happiness.
Rating:
Summary: Read this one aloud
Review: The rhythm of sentence fragments, lists of images, occasional insertion of a farsical headline, harsh purity of the characters. You can't help like Quoyle and his daughters, Sunshine and Bunny, in spite of their ordinariness. You can't help fall into the dialect of the Newfoundland fishermen and the reporters who, with Quoyle, prepare The Shipping News. Fun to read. Anxious approach to each new chapter. Waves on the shores. Boats capsizing. Bodies floating. What will happen to Quoyle tonight? Man Finds Romance Reading Aloud to Wife
Rating:
Summary: A commentary on the triumph of the human spirit.
Review: The Shipping News is easily one of the best novels ever written on the adaptability of man and the ability of the average person to win out over adversity. Linking graphic imagery of Newfoundland with the life story of her protagonist, Proulx has created a character with whom the reader can both relate and empathize. The book is a distillation of life itself, covering episodes of pain and suffering, love and loss and with a denouement as poignant in its optimism as could be hoped. The book is a "must read" for anyone who has experienced adversity and seeks within themselves the courage and will to carry on
Rating:
Summary: A beautiful, evocative book
Review: I have been systematically reading all the books chosen for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the Nobel Prize in literature (including translations) - I am about 40% complete in my task and to date, E.AnnieProulx's beautifully crafted book is my current favorite. This is a delicious book which could be enjoyed by all ages. I would also recommend highly Proulx's Postcards. What a writer!!
Rating:
Summary: Time, space and rediscovery
Review: Attaching story of a social and emotional outcast, THE SHIPPING NEWS definitely knotted me to my chair. With nothing to lose, Quoyle is shipped to Newfoundland with/by his aunt and is given the chance to start a new life. The slow unravelling of his personal knots enables Quoyle to progressively link up with his new environment and rediscover the value of relationships and his own place within relationships. "Selbstbildung" could be the general concept of this novel, experience being all the more validating and enriching that it is here meaningfully tributary of time and space. But "mother" appeared to me as the unconscious knot which Quoyle will learn to come to terms with. Indeed, after the accelerated route from child- to adulthood, where motherly references are non-existent or abused, the central character will, at his own pace, mature in a process of unravelling all the former emotional short-cuts his life had taken. Quoyle discovers the nurturing role of being a mother for Bunny and Sunshine, taking time to listen, love and learn. Newfoundland is also the place where he will meet his feminine alter ego. Mother nature itself, appearing as the first major obstacle will convincingly mark the final step towards Quoyle's self-renewal by shipping away the last family vestige, the last ancestoral tie in a purifying storm
Rating:
Summary: A charming and brilliantly written look at death and rebirth
Review: The Shipping News is a gripping, if somewhat slow-moving, tale about a man entering early middle age via the vehicle
of abandonment. His relationship with a philanderous and
unloving spouse ends tragically and his only response is
to grossly shift latitude, with a distant relative and his
children in tow, moving from the chaos and complexity of the United States to the weatherbeaten, harsh simplicity of Newfoundland. For mine, it is a fascinating tale of pruning of the soul
back to the thick leafless branch and its slow rebirth through adversity and discovery. From an antipodean perspective, it was interesting to see the author include
an oblique reference to a news item about the "Australian Lesbian Vampire Killings", which indeed
occurred but a few miles from my home. I thoroughly
enjoyed reading this tome and look forward to devouring
a collection of the author's short stories in the near
future.
Dr Mark Walterfang
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