Rating: 
Summary: Possibilities and restorations.
Review: Annie Proulx starts with a choppy style to suit a choppy life and a dull ache coming off the prose hits you in the bone. As you move with the characters to a new place, a new level, a new beginning, the prose also takes on a new life, more fluid, more hopeful. This is the story of a real person, living a real life. I could go on about allegory and meaningful transitions and more literate blathering, but this book is simple beautiful - read it and if you have the capacity you will agree.
Rating:
Summary: The best effort by one of our most skilled novelists.
Review: Simply one of the 10 best novels of the last decade.
While I liked but did not love 'Accordian Crimes' and 'Postcards', 'The Shipping News' stands out as the finest effort of one of our best novelists. The story of a perpetual loser who finally finds his place in the world (in one of the continent's least hospitable places), the novel is at its best when it places the reader upon the desolate rockfaces of Newfoundland, a region that tends to kill the human spirit when it's not putting them in an early grave. With the spectre of being drowned, frozen to death, or sucked under by doomed legacy of his own ancestors, Quoyle struggles mightily to anchor himself and his family in an environment that is alternately threatening and welcoming and, above all, gives him a chance to start over. The characters are solid and memorable, the plot is well-structured, and the writing sharp and often startling in its precision and poetry. The dialogue is a joy to read, particularly the completely unsentimental characterization of two children as they respond to adult-sized tragedies and joys. Particularly impressive is the way Proulx is able to so economically sketch a place or time or character in a way that hints at greater depths and scopes (the political and economic complexities of the Newfoundland oil and fishing industries, the gossipy confines of small offices and family-run businesses, the spontaneous adventures of a far-away couple that Quoyle barely knows). One particular scene is truly stunning and emblematic of Proulx's skill (spoiler warning) - a going-away party that slowly morphs into an orgy of destruction. Here, Proulx portrays a senseless act that is unpredictable and shocking, yet consistent with the desperation of a remote outpost to maintain human contact as it simultaneously destroys the thing it loves. Like the book itself, this scene follows the theme of destruction and regeneration in surprising and unforeseen ways.
Rating: 
Summary: Reader defeated by The Shipping News
Review: I don't think I've ever read any book quite like The Shipping News. I bought it due to the recommendation of a good friend back in 1996 and have attempted to read it ever since. The writing is... unusual. It reads more like poetry and sticks in your mind that way, too. A short sentence. A bemused look. The reader is confused. A gust of wind. The toaster pops. The smell of aftershave. This reader wonders how it's all connected. The groan of anguish. I haven't gotten through it. I just can't bring myself to read it as I get so lost. Even after seeing the movie, I picked up the book and found it just as hard to read. Choppy sentences, slow moving plot... did I say plot? The book of the book states that 'Quole finds himself a part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama'. Now, the movie must have forgotten to put this in, and I'm pretty sure I haven't found that in the book, either, though I kept hoping. I suspect that the people who read this book must have given up and made something up to write on the back of the book. They probably thought, well, it must have a plot, so let me think of a word that doesn't really tie me down. Read this book when you want something very different. I'm sure that when I'm old enough, I'll appreciate it, too. (Retirement is only 20 years away.)
Rating:
Summary: pretentious and unreadable
Review: The author's writing style, which I'm sure is supposed to be "groundbreaking", is unreadable. I personally found it offensive, affected, and completely pretentious. After 75 pages of frustration, I decided not to waste my time and rented the movie. This proved to be a wise move. For the first time since "The Godfather", the movie is actually far better than the novel on which is it based!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Save Time, Watch the Movie
Review: It's rare that I would ever recommend a movie over a book, but the movie of the Shipping News is far superior in my mind because the reader isn't subjected to Proulx's short, choppy prose. The movie also sticks close enough to the story of the book (though it chops out some unimportant stuff for time) that if you just watch it and don't bother with the book you really aren't missing anything. It's not that the movie was perfect either, but it's not as bad as the book. The problems with the book are numerous. First is Proulx's overall writing style. Bad. Real bad. Choppy sentences. No flow. Author Ignores Basic Rules of Grammar. Looking at excerpts of her other books I have to assume this writing style was intentional, maybe to make it seem like an article from the Gammy Bird, but that technique would have made more sense if the story were told in first-person with Quoyle as the narrator. After a while her style just grated on me and more importantly it kept me from really getting into the book. The story, even the characters were decent enough that I would have enjoyed the book had it been written in complete sentences. I also never understood a few things. Why doesn't Quoyle have a first name? Everywhere he goes he just introduces himself as "Quoyle". Who does that? If I go somewhere and meet someone for the first time I say, "Hi, my name is BJ Fraser." I don't say, "Hi, I'm Fraser." It's revealed after a while that his first initials are R.G., so his name is probably Bob or something equally anonymous that there's no need to go to great lengths to keep it secret. Also, why does he always refer to Agnis Hamm as "the aunt"? Maybe it's because I have several aunts, but I say "Aunt Mary" or "Aunt Jane" not "the aunt". It could just be the way people from New York or Newfoundland talk, I wouldn't really know. The area I think the movie really excels over the book is that the movie plays up the relationship between Quoyle and Wavey Prowse a little more. It never seemed to go anywhere in the book, nor did I really care because Wavey sounded like an unattractive bore anyway. Also, I liked the last sentence of narration in the movie where Quoyle says (though I can't quote it exactly): "if a drowning man can come back to life, <something about the house blowing away>, then I believe a broken man can be healed." That really sums up the whole point of the book and movie, a great way to end things. Better than the end line of the book, which I can't remember at all. Chalk up "The Shipping News" as another Pulitzer dud but also another screen gem.
Rating:
Summary: Lovely Tale About Rebirth and Redemption!
Review: Like the wonderful recent film version culled from it, this thoughtful, subtle, and well-written novel follows the odyssey of a man so incapacitated by the skeletons in his personal closet that he is unable to deal with what is real and important in his own life. Thus, he attempts to flee to his ancestral digs to rekindle his flame and restore some hope of putting himself back together. This Pulitzer prize winning work of fiction is a deft, uncontrived, and also not quite predictable yarn about how wrong Thomas Wolfe was in saying you can never go home again. Of course you can go home, Tom, even if going home means going someplace new, someplace where you can find your heart, your health, and your handiwork again. Even if it's someplace you've never been before. In this lovely piece, it is clear that one's home is where one's heart is lucky enough to find it, in this case along the coastal waters of Newfoundland. This much said, I found this to be a thought-provoking tale of man gone back to try to find his place in the scheme of things, a man returning in search of his roots. Given the fact that doing so requires Quoyle to abandon all of his preconceptions and try to recreate himself, and in this the relationships that develop both hinder and help Quoyle in his own recreation process. In this sense the book is a carefully crafted character study of Quoyle, and it details his tortured efforts to pry himself out the long-term depression and self-recriminations and doubt he has fallen victim to, and in finding a way out of the box life has placed him in. The characters and the story are both well accomplished, and the storyline proceeds with some twists and turns along the way en-route to his growth and maturation, finding both lust and love to be invigorating, dangerous, and intoxicating. While one finds a number of nuances here that are not as prominent in the film version, what I noticed while reading it was the degree to which it aided me in understanding why Kevin Spacey played various elements of the character the way he did. I recommend this to anyone wanting what eventually turns out to be an uplifting and inspirational work about the possibility of and finding himself again, and finding redemption in his connections and commitments to others he comes to care about it in the course of the story. Enjoy!
Rating:
Summary: BAD BAD BAD
Review: see above. Seriously...I have had a run of bad luck. I am a huge reader who averages between 4-10 books a week. I am constantly keeping my eye out for good books. This was a HUGE dissapointment. I picked it up because it was highly recommended and won some misleading award. I did not relate to the main characters and found the relationships to be far too weird to be interesting. Just a bad book all around.
Rating: 
Summary: If you saw and liked the movie, then read the book as well
Review: I picked up E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize winning novel "The Shipping News" because while I liked the movie version, I had the definite feeling that there must be so much more in the novel. After reading the novel I must say how impressed I am with Robert Nelson Jacobs' screenplay, which stays true to the novel while enhancing some of its better parts. However, I am even more surprised that the novel was not as full with forgotten details as I had thought. There are plenty of little details in the life and times of Quoyle, which makes reading the book well worth the effort. The quotations from "The Ashley Book of Knots," which start off most but not all of the chapters, are a nice little metaphorical touch for putting events in interesting contexts, but there is not as much more about the actual Shipping News column as you would think. Again, reading the books just makes me appreciate the screenplay all the much more, which is usually not the conclusion I come to when I have both read the book and seen the movie. I also have to wonder about the impact of Mary Bess Engle's cover design, showing the Quoyle's dragging the house across the ice flow, because that bit of family history is not as important in the novel as it is in the film and I am inclined to think it is this cover that helped make it so. Therefore, if you saw the movie and enjoyed it (and have any interest at all in the ways how a screenplay can be adapted from a novel), then read the novel and prolong your enjoyment of the tale.
Rating:
Summary: No stars, please ...
Review: The choppy writing style (I honestly don't believe that there is one complete sentence in the entire novel) wore me down. It unnerved me, made me edgy. I know there are probably some people out there going, "That's right! That's it!! It unnerved you like a good novel should!!!" Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Even edgy, unnerving books should allow you room to slip into the prose and become one with it. I tried in vein to slip into this book. It had nothing to do with the subject matter, just the style of writing. In "Misery", Stephen King talks about "falling through the page", getting caught up in the writing. I could not achieve this with "Shipping News". If this is what makes a Pulitzer prize-winning novel, you can count me out.
Rating:
Summary: Dark Compelling Voyage of a Soul
Review: Not to be confused with the Chamber of Commerce endorsed vision of Newfoundland. In this dark, but very compelling voyage, Annie Proulx introduces us to an ordinary man, the hulking, clueless news reporter, the unfavorite son, the ever unlucky Quoyle. Quoyle's very bad marriage ends with the always faithless wife Petal having sold their two young daughters. Petal and the man she is running with are killed in a horrific crash. After locating his daughters, Quoyle seeks a very different life. Returning with his aunt to the old homestead in Newfoundland, Quoyle tries to settle his family into a very peculiar landscape. Rebuilding their lives after too many mistakes and blunders, he finds his niche writing The Shipping News column for an eccentric tabloid of a newspaper. The constant threat and beauty of the sea pounds the shores of the generational struggle to sustain life and to find meaning. Grim, gritty, occasionally brutal scenes are bluntly and courageously and quite elegantly written. With an ocean full of secrets and dread, ghosts are easily awakened. Child molestation, incest, grizzly car and boat accidents - nothing is glossed over. Long brutal winters, the uneasy alliance with government and maritime authorities, a party gone terribly awry, and murder on a Hitler yacht - still the focus is on the simple good life of a man who loves and cares for his family. The recorded version rather wonderfully captures the right tones, the despair of a cruel life, the desolation of the landscape and the nuances of dialogue and setting in a way that the reader/listener feels like they are poised on the windowsill of the these lives, as we listen to this lengthy story (11 CDs).
The author won a Pulitzer prize for this piece of writing, it is not an easy or a gentle read, but is certainly a captivating and intense and an opportunity to see how lives can change. I am very now anxious to see if the movie does justice to the story.
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