Rating: 
Summary: Compelling, very rich description of life in Newfoundland
Review: The harsh sea-focused life among the tough residents of Newfoundland is a rare subject for U.S. audiences. Annie Proulx' novel, herself a part-time resident of the island province, makes its residents and life come alive with her rich prose. The words, accents and jargon take some work understanding, but it's well worth the effort. Your mind's eye can imagine the awful weather, the difficulty in performing everyday tasks, and the great pleasures of human contact and "breaks in the weather" can provide.
We follow the experiences of one family, uprooted from a non-functioning marriage in the States to return to their ancestral home...and in the bargain, make a new life with new discoveries about themselves and others. Again, Ms. Proulx' great feel of the local landscape makes the reader become a "Newfie" as part of the experience. A Pulitzer Prize winner and must read for those with the curiosity about an obscure corner of North America.
Rating: 
Summary: An instructive but vastly overrated look at a late bloomer.
Review: E. Annie Proulx has a gift for describing the ocean that even the late Jacques Cousteau might envy. At one point in this otherwise overrated story, she describes an unruffled bay as "an aluminum tray dotted with paper boats." And she's equally vivid when the weather turns nasty: "Translucent thirty-foot combers the color of bottles crashed onto stone, coursed bubbles into a churning lake of milk shot with foam." Unfortunately, dead-on maritime observation and the main character's amusing habit of thinking in headlines can't by themselves redeem a meandering plot whose revelations are telegraphed whole chapters in advance of their appearance. Notice, too, that nearly every reviewer swoons over the Proulx style. Her writing is described as "staccato," "atmospheric," "vivid," and "unique." Phooey! Clerks at Western Union have been writing this way for decades. Proulx simply gets more mileage from sentence fragments than anyone else. It's a good trick, but it verges on self-parody after awhile. Some of us still believe that the best writing styles are the ones you don't notice. Bottom line: while reading this book, I stopped to read three others.
Rating: 
Summary: Difficult at first, but good News after all
Review: E. Annie Proulx's "The Shipping News" is a great novel. However, it is not recommended to everybody. It sounds like a paradox, but it is true. To begin with, it is not an easy read. It takes time and patience, but it is worthwhile. The action is very slow and interior, besides much happens outside the characters, the main action is with their feelings and what goes inside their minds and hearts. Thus this is not the kind of novel that appeals to those used to fast and easy books. Moreover, this is a very intellectual material and requires a lot of references and thinking from the reader. Quoyle is a thirty-six years old who has devoted his life to his wife and children. He hasn't accomplished much, but he's fine with what they have. However his wife is not happy with this life. She sells their daughters and while is running away she dies. This is falls like a bomb in Quoyle's life --disturbing his peaceful routine. In order to restore the peace, he moves to his ancestors' house in an isolated and cold town. There, along with his aunt, he intends to bring his life back to place. With a new job and meeting an interesting widow, Quoyle realizes that life is good, but he still has some ghosts from the past haunting him. "The Shipping News" is a novel fulfilled with metaphors. Everything has more than its first meaning. Quoyle is not only the name of the protagonist, but also something related to ships --and it will be through the shipping news that our protagonist will find his place in the world. Another thing is a special touch in the novel is the quotes from "The Ashley Book of Knots', written by Clifford W. Ashley, or from "The Mariner's Dictionary". They are nice and give the insights on what the chapter will be about --another device related to the use of metaphors--, plus there are illustration of these knots which are very well done and even cute. The movie version, directed by Lasse Hallström is a great and underrated film. More than being faithful to the novel, it makes justice to the spirit of the story. It is perfect to take the audience into Quoyle's world. Both movie and book are highly recommended, but only to specific audiences. My suggestion is, if you want to read the book the effort is worthwhile --it is diffcult, but reawarding--, however if you feel this is not the book for you, do not force yourself to read it.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful writing, but misses the mark....
Review: The first thirty pages of the story are engrossing with lots of things happening and lots of great character development, but unfortunately the story then stalls to a turtle's pace. The entire middle of the book details the process of the weaving of the bonds between Quoyle, "the aunt", his daughters, and the cast of characters he encounters while rebuilding his life. Some interesting anecdotes are offered during this rebuilding phase, but it was overdone and tedious. Every nuance of Quoyle's healing is examined in painful detail, and the reader is repeatedly banged over the head with the premise that it takes a long time to heal from tragedy and loss.
Rating:
Summary: An odd but ultimately worthwhile little book
Review: I have to admit, when I first started reading this book, I came very close to giving up on it altogether, something which I rarely do. The early pages of the novel introduce Quoyle, the main character (whose first name is never revealed), describing him in terms which are so painfully pathetic that it is difficult to read. Quoyle is a failure in virtually everything he does, but a tentative friend ship with a man name Partridge lands him an occasional job at a newspaper. By the second chapter, however, Partridge is gone, leaving Quoyle to meet and surprisingly marry a woman who causes him nothing but pain. Two disagreeable children later, Petal is gone, and Quoyle's long lost Aunt convinces the family to move back to the ancestral Newfoundland. At first, the change of setting does little to improve the story--the sad conditions of this odd little family are almost too much to bear--but eventually, the novel comes into its own on Newfoundland's cold shores.
Once in Newfoundland, Quoyle undergoes a remarkable--if somewhat unbelievable--transformation. A half-hearted journalist at best, he blossoms in his new role as reporter of the shipping news. At the same time, he begins to learn how to act in social relationships, including an unlikely friendship with an aloof widow named Wavey. Although the other characters go through periods of growth as well--the Aunt comes to terms with her own tragic past, Quoyle's daughters become well-adjusted little girls, etc.--ultimately, the novel becomes the love story of Quoyle and Wavey, two figures who have had their hearts scarred by others. Finally, everything in the book is set against the backdrop of the fishing community, from the lifestyles of the characters to the quotes from The Ashley Book of Knots which precede every chapter. Although I still can't quite understand why this book won a Pulitzer Prize, it is definitely a worthwhile read.
Rating:
Summary: A Pulitzer Prize-winning Classic
Review: I pray that you have not seen the movie first! The beauty of this book is the author's writing style. This did not come through in the movie, making the movie very boring.
Annie Proulx managed to take bleak geography (Nova Scotia) with a dull subject (shipping) and make a wonderful novel out of it.
Bottom line: I loved this book and have read it three times. I would highly recommend it to anyone.
Rating: 
Summary: My English Teacher would have killed me...
Review: I have never in my life seen in one book so many run on and sentence fragments in my life! "Sucked in a mouthful of tea." That's it! THAT is a sentence? If I wrote sentences like this in High School I would have failed English, and this book won the Pulitzer?
Other than that the story was slow, uneventful, bland caracters and a snail-paced plot. Even the movie was a horrid flop.
Rating: 
Summary: Painfully written and boring
Review: The reviews of this book focus on Annie Proulx's 'Contemperary style of writting' in truth the writting style is anything but, it's confusing and most of all irritating. Reading this book was like trying to wade through a swimming pool full of syrup.
The plot had potential but the story was completly masked by the truly terrible writting. I can not for the life of me work out how this book won the Pulitzer Prize. (Friends in high places maybe?)
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully crafted, stunningly good novel
Review: This is one of the very best novels I've had the chance to read. It's not just that the story is rich in and of itself - and it is - it's that the words themselves are so artfully assembed that they provide layers of undercurrents that add depth and emotion to the narrative. This book reads like a symphony, with many intertwined themes and narratives all woven together into a whole, unified picture.
Proulx writes in choppy short sentecnes. It's akward and clumsy language viewed against the littered murky landscape of personal failure and Mockingbird, NY, where the story starts. But when the story shifts location - in the first of several deeply satisfying views of fair-handed fate - the choppiness of the words begin to work in concert with the setting. Words that sounded unnatural and coarse describing suburban life are perfect when describing the Newfundland coast line and the direct, honest, self-possesed people who live there. As the characters grow and gain depth, the language fits them more and more clearly.
Proulx describes a world that could hardly be more concrete and weaves in thrilling bits of magic. She doesn't water down an incredibly hard life but weaves in the certainty that it's a also a good life. In the end, she's created a lovely, satisfying book without the slightest hint of syrup, contrivance or manipulation. Lovely, lovely, lovely. I hated to see it end.
Rating:
Summary: The style, not the story
Review: While the style of Annie Proulx's prose gripped me immediately, the story never did. The prose is very carefully crafted and is worth taking time over. She writes very methodically using metaphor very skillfully and creatively.
Unfortunately, this is not a story that will move you too deeply. Sure, the characters can be related to and in particular Quoyle is depicted so clearly you feel like you are very involved in his life. But I finished the book wanting more and wondering what, in fact, the story had really been about.
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