The Shipping News

Quoyle is an overweight loser with a cruel past, stuck with no friends or relatives, a dead-end job and a beloved wife who is inventively cruel. After the worst tragedy he can imagine, his only hopes are his two small children, one of whom is decidedly peculiar, and a mysterious aunt who shows up to help out. When they set off for Newfoundland, in the direction of his dubious family roots, adventures of a startling nature ensue. Although the story’s details are rather grim – haunting visions, shocking tragedies, brutal weather, shipwrecks and people dying right and left -- one is surprised and delighted by sudden scraps of wit that are likely to provoke a laugh-out-loud response. All of this told in a voice like a journalist talking show more with a cigar in his mouth, spouting poetry. Finally, a growing crowd of charming, quirky characters joins hands to move the story toward small triumphs and great truths, and it all ends too soon, no matter how slowly you read. An absolute gem of a book. show less

I loved this quirky novel of imperfect people making a place for themselves in an inhospitable place. Full of endearing characters that never really feel inauthentic, the dark humor throughout prevents it from being completely bleak. Quoyle is a wonderfully awkward anti-hero whose love for his children and growing sense of himself and his own possibilities adds a real warmth to the story.

A slow-burner that rewards those that stick with it. There's no real plot here, just a year or so with a rudderless man who has been kicked by life in general and especially by those who should of loved him.
Quoyle relocates with his daughters to Newfoundland, his ancestral home, after tragedy strikes. With the help of his aunt, fellow reporters at the local newspaper, and the townspeople, Quoyle perhaps finds his place in the world and love that is given back in kind instead of stomped on.
What drives this book is getting to know the small-town people and their struggles as their lives change with the death of the fishing economy. Proulx captures locations and the locals' speech patterns nicely and never presents them as eccentrics, show more although they certainly are characters.
Poignant, humorous, a lovely book. show less

“Quoyle: A coil of rope.”
“A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on if necessary.” THE ASHLEY BOOK OF KNOTS

And so, the epigraph to chapter 1 pretty much sets up the book: a middle-aged man with unfortunate physical characteristics, seen as a failure by his parents, an object of derision to his brother and wife. Quoyle gradually begins to take hold of life, aided by his acerbic aunt, who has an agenda of her own. Back to her roots in Newfoundland they go, where they scratch out a living amongst a cast of characters painted with bold, crisp strokes of the author’s pen.

Clipped. Spare. But descriptive writing. It suited the story, though it took me awhile to get with her show more program. And I still had problems with a few parts. Too many ‘like’s. “Pack ice like broken restaurant dishes”, “fingernails like sugar scoops”, “fingernails like teaspoons”. Too many long paragraphs of short descriptives. “A wind related to the Blue Norther, the frigid Blaast and the Landlash. A cousin to the Bull’s eye squall that started in a small cloud with a ruddy center, mother-in-law to the ….” (and don’t think that was the end of THAT paragraph). Or about ads in the local paper, “freshly coined phrases for vinyl siding, rubber stamps, life insurance, folk music festivals …” (and continuing in this vein for 15 lines…). Too much sexual abuse; this sentence pretty much sums it up: “sexual abuse of children is an old Newf tradition.”, which was all too often spelled out in these pages. To all this I say: Too much Like fingernails on blackboard! But I persevered.

The underlying story - looking for love with no misery attached, parenting better than he’d been parented by, investing himself where no one had ever invested in him – was interesting. And along the way, I learned a lot about fishing communities and living off the land in a hard-scrabble existence. The setting was painted incredibly lifelike in my mind’s eye, but so were the distasteful parts. That was too much for me, which is why I rated this book a little lower than I otherwise would have. show less

Really enjoyed this book.....(I do not know what my subconscious was assuming this book was about, but it was nothing like what I was expecting). The Newfoundland environment as portrayed in this novel is absolutely haunting.....and that is a good thing...I wanna go! Really clever writing....characters speak out loud in quotes, then finish up in their minds (without quotes). Although this was in fact about an awkward unusual man......and we all know there are many, many of those out there.....this was so much more. Lots of humanity......different approaches to death......surviving in the harsh place that is Newfoundland......lost loves.....lost lives......running a newspaper.......new loves......tragic histories....dramatic show more weather......living off of the sea.......and all done with a gentle, nudging prose that takes us there without the story becoming predictable, or god help us, silly. We had our first Maine snowstorm of the year as i was finishing this up......and afterwards, as I shoveled my little heart out, I could not stop thinking about Quoyle, the story, the landscape, the sea. When the book is over and i continue to think about it, that is a very good thing! Bravo! show less

I think it takes nerve to give your book the title The Shipping News.

The shipping news is that dull stuff in the agate type in the last section of the paper that nobody reads -- right?

LA PALOMA IN FROM HONG KONG - Captain Jacoby, Master

But this The Shipping News is that rarity - prize winning book that deserved all the plated tin people threw at it.

Quoyle is a half baked sort of journalist in upstate New York with two young kids and a wife who runs around. In a heart stopping tragedy, the wife is killed and Quoyle (pronounced like "Coil") is scooped up by a distant relative aunt and they move up to a rough and lonely part of Newfoundland.

And that's when the wind starts whispering in the sails of this graceful little book.

The house they show more move into is a storm tossed ruin, the people are sometimes soft as a sea-breeze friendly and sometimes cruel and dark and violent as the sea.

And our Quoyle pulls up his sea boots and learns what he's capable of and finds a place in the community and learns his way in the sea. And the girls learn too. Even the aunt has her story to tell.

Wonderful rich complex writing - you will be looking up a lot of words that are local argot or archaic or just the writer telling her tale. Just go with it.

The Newfoundland coast is as much a character as any flesh and body person in the book.

Read for a book group - and I loved it show less

Quoyle is not a wet loaf, nor ever was he, and I resent your assertion in the opening passages of this novel to the contrary, Proulx.

Our protagonist starts real low, and winds up somewhere in the middle, if you're looking at the balance of things from an external, objective standard. But the personal growth of poor old corpulent Quoyle over the course of this yarn, is an incredible exercise in the exploration and explanations of the multitudes that dwell within us. Filled my heart right up.

More than this, the power of family and community to both destroy and construct a person are painted deftly from black to white, with every grey between them shown in full. The characters here all mean something, stand for something, and Proulx has show more put them there to teach us something.

This book buoyed me up and carried me along like the jetstream for the first two acts, but the final act faltered a little by comparison. It dragged, lagged, and wandered lost-like, and I had to push myself to get through to the end. And upon getting there, it was all a little too neat, while simultaneously leaving certain key set-ups without any sort of a pay-off. I get the impression the author struggled to find a fitting way to put a full stop on this thing, to leave these people and this place with the same adept touch with which they were introduced. It's not enough to ruin it though, not by a long way.

A highly worthwhile and enlightening experience overall. show less