Annie Proulx

shipping news

Surprising transformations take place when a newspaperman's elderly aunt and two daughters decide to move back to their family home on the coast of Newfoundland.

The Shipping News

Sarah Christine Gill

A few torn pieces of early morning cloud the shape and color of salmon fillets. The tender greenish sky hardening as they drove between high snowbanks. A rim of light fooded up, drenched the car. Quoyle's yellow hands with bronze hairs, holding the wheel, Wavey's maroon serge suit like cloth of gold. Then it was ordinary daylight, the black and white landscape of ice, snow, rock and sky. 

 "It will be fun." The word sounded stupid in his mouth. When had he ever had "fun"? Or Wavey, chapped face already set in the lines of middle age, an encroaching dryness about her beyond stove heat and wind? What was it, anyway? Both of them the kind who stood with forced smiles watching other people dance, spin on barstools, throw bowling bals. Having fun. But Quoyle did like movies, the darkness, the outlines of strangers' hair against the screen, the smell of peanuts and shampoo, popcorn squeaking in teeth. He could fly away from his chin and hulking shape into the white clothes and slender bodies on the screen. 

Wavey said yes. Herry could stay with her father. Yes, yes indeed.

A deep smell to the air, some elusive taste that made him pull in conscious breaths. Sky the straw-colored ichor that seeps from a wound. Rust blossoms along the station wagon's door panels. He could have been dead in Mockingburg, New York. Jack stood in the skiff, pronging cod onto the stage. Quoyle pulled on a slicker, his gloves. He seized his knife, picked up a cod. In the beginning it had seemed a strange way to conduct an editorial meeting. 

"Hands might as well be doing something while we talk," said Jack, scrambling up. “Always hated the sight of five, six grown men sitting around a table, doing nothing but work their jaw. You see them doodle away, rip pieces of paper, wagging their foot, fooling with paper clips." 

Quoyle didn't want to think about paper clips. Told Jack about the machine gunner, the random shot on the freeway, the riots. "Well known how violent it is in the States. Worst you'll get bere," said Jack, "is a good punch-up and maybe your car pushed over the cliff." They worked silently. 

Quoyle's job was hoisting and lifting. His headache had strengthened. He could feel its shape and color, a gigantic Y that curved from his brain stem over his skull to each eye, in color a reddish- black like grilled meat. 

These waters, thought Quoyle, haunted by lost ships, fishermen. explorers gurgled down into sea holes as black as a dog's throat. Bawling into salt broth. Vikings down the cracking winds, steering through fog by the polarized light of sun-stones. The Inuit in skin boats, breathing, breathing, rhythmic suck of frigid air, iced paddles dipping, spray freezing, sleek back rising, jostle, the boat torn, spiraling down. Millennial bergs from the glaciers, morbid, silent except for waves breaking on their flanks, the deceiving sound of shoreline where there was no shore. Foghorns, smothered gun reports along the coast. Ice welding land to sea. Frost smoke. Clouds mottled by reflections of water holes in the plains of ice. The glare of ice erasing dimension, distance, subjecting senses to mirage and illusion. A rare place. 222

When he stopped the evening was closing in again. Cooked tvo pounds of shrimp in olive oil and garlic, sucked the meat from the shells. Went down to the dock in the twilight with the last beer, endured the mosquitoes, watching the lights of Killick-Claw come on. The lighthouses on the points stuttering.

Quoyle passed a triangle of toast spread with plenty of grape jelly to Billy. How frail the old man looked, he thought, in close quarters with rumpy Tert Card. 

The Shipping News After a hundred feet the trail went steep and wet, and he slid through wild angelica stalks and billows of dogberry. Did not notice knots tied in the tips of the alder branches. 

Entered a band of spruce, branches snarled with moss, whiskey jacks futtering. The path became a streambed full of juicy rocks. A waterfall with the flattened ocean at its foot. He stumbled, grasping at Alexanders, the leaves perfuming his hands. 

Fountains of blackflies and mosquitoes around him. Quoyle saw a loop of blue plastic. He picked it up, then a few feet farther along spied a sodden diaper. A flat stick stamped5 POINTS Popsicle Pete." When he came on a torn plastic bag he filled it with debris. 

This place, she thought, this rock, six thousand miles of coast blind-wrapped in fog. Sunkers under wrinkled water, boats threading tickles between ice-scabbed cliffs. Tundra and barrens a land of stunted spruce men cut and drew away. 

How many had come here, leaning on the rail as she leaned now. Staring at the rock in the sea. Vikings, the Basques, the French, Engish, Spanish, Portuguese. Drawn by the cod, from the days when massed fish slowed ships on the drift for the passage to the Spice Isles, expecting cities of gold. The lookout dreamed of roasted auk or sweet berries in cups of plaited grass, but saw erumpling waves, lights flickering along the ship rails. The only cities were of ice, bergs with cores of beryl, blue gems within white gems, that some said gave off an odor of almonds. She had caught the bitter scent as a child. 

Shore parties returned to ship blood-crusted with insect bites. Wet, wet, the interior of the island, they said, bog and marsh, rivers and chains of ponds alive with metal-throated birds. The ships scraped on around the points. And the lookout saw shapes of caribou folding into fog. 

Later, some knew it as a place that bred malefic spirits. Spring starvation showed skully heads, knobbed joints beneath flesh. What desperate work to stay alive, to scrob and claw through hard times The alchemist sea changed fishermen into wet bones, sent boats to drift among the cod, cast them on the landwash. 

As she spoke she changed in some provocative way, seemed suddenly drenched in eroticism as a diver rising out of a pool gleams like chrome with a sheet of unbroken water for a fractional moment. 

Then, at a meeting, Petal Bear. Thin, moist, hot. Winked at him. Quoyle had the big man's yearning for small women. He stood next to her at the refreshment table. Grey eyes close together, curly hair the color of oak. The fluorescent light made her as pale as candle wax. Her eyelids gleamed with some dusky unguent. A metallic thread in her rose sweater. These faint sparks cast a shimmer on her ike a spill of light. She smiled, the pearl- tinted lips wet with cider. His hand shot up to his chin. She chose a cookie with frosting eyes and an almond for a mouth. Eyed him as her teeth snapped out a new moon. An invisible hand threw loops and crossings in Quoyle's intestines. Growls from his shirt. 

At thirty-six, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons — and the unpredictable forces of nature and society — and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.

A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.

--back cover

Sarah Sammis

Quoyle moves to Newfoundland after his wife tries to run away with his life's savings after selling their daughters into the sex trade. The wife fails on both accounts and loses her life in the process. It sounds like an unlikely way to start a novel but E. Annie Proulx makes it work in The Shipping News.

Quoyle is described as average in all ways. As a child he never could do whatever his father expected of him. As and adult struggling in his job as a reporter he can never write to please his editor. He's not set up as the most likable of protagonists and perhaps I read at first to see if he'd fail in his endeavors after his move. Remarkably, he doesn't.

If anything, Quoyle reminds me of Dr. Martin Ellingham of Doc Martin who returns to his ancestral home after washing out as a surgeon in London. He's just as out of sorts as the new G.P. as Quoyle is as a reporter for the local paper. But both find their places eventually.

Newfoundland, home of his ancestors, some who are rumored to have been stark raving mad, suits him. Even if he arrives not knowing how to swim, fish or do anything else that the locals expect a resident to know. Despite all that and perhaps with careful egging on by his aunt, Quoyle manages to muddle along and make a place for himself and his daughters.

At the start of most chapters, Proulx includes a type of knot or other maritime piece of information relevant to the chapter. These snippets come from Ashley's Book of Knots, a book she found at a garage sale. I have to admit that I looked forward to seeing which knot would be introduced next. I've also added her source material to my wishlist.

Five stars.

When Quoyle's two-timing wife meets her just deserts, he retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters and family members all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As Quoyle confronts his private demons -- and the unpredictable forces of nature and society -- he begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery. 

A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family, "The Shipping News" shows why Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.

(back cover)

A Novel

Colleen

3.5 Stars but I'll round up to 4 Stars

I have mixed feelings about The Shipping News. I feel like there is pressure to like award winning books particularly Pulitzer Prize winners. So I tried to keep that out of my mind while I was reading this. And though I found it a decent read, I did not identify it as being particularly profound or amazing.

I liked the beginning and the end quite well. However, there was a large section in the middle where I was more than a little bored. So much so that when my library copy was due, I returned it without much hesitation and didn't check it out again for about six weeks. (It's very difficult for me not to finish a book, so I did revisit it eventually.)

The Shipping News reminded me of East of Eden in a few ways. They are both very character driven books focusing on the everyday actions of certain families with plot taking a backseat to character building and description. It did seem at times that Proulx was trying to emulate John Steinbeck's style although it certainly did not come close to Steinbeck's epic prose.

Proulx's writing was also very stylized. I started this book just after reading The God of Small Things: a book which thoroughly frustrated me with its excessively stylized writing and overreaching self-aggrandizement. So I was not thrilled to discover I had picked up another book with unconventional writing. I quickly found that Proulx's style was not nearly as irritating as Arundhati Roy's was. But though at first I found The Shipping News pretty and poetic, it did wear thin after a while. Here are a few examples of the nicer writing.
“All the complex wires of life were stripped out and he could see the structure of life. Nothing but rock and sea, the tiny figures of humans and animals against them for a brief time.”
 “Was love then like a bag of assorted sweets passed around from which one might choose more than once? Some might sting the tongue, some invoke night perfume. Some had centers as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eyes and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought clam and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?” 
But eventually, the overabundance of fragmented sentences and odd tenses diminished my enjoyment of this book. While certain aspects made sense, such as the main character thinking of things as if they were headlines due to his working in journalism, overall the writing was too odd for my tastes. Here is an example of the odd writing that made up most of the book:
“Three or four days later he was still thinking about seal flipper pie. Remembered the two raw eggs Petal gave him. That he invested with pathetic meaning. 
'Petal,' said Quoyle to Wavey, 'hated to cook. Hardly ever did.' Thought of the times he had fixed dinner for her, set put his stupid candles, folded the napkins as though they were important, waited and finally ate alone, the radio on for company. And later dined with the children, shoveling in canned spaghetti, scraping baby food off small chins. 
'Once she gave me two eggs. Raw eggs for a present.' He had made an omelet of them, hand-fed her as thought she were a nestling bird. And saved the shells in a paper cup on top of the kitchen cabinet. Where they still must be.” 
It didn't help that about the time I disinterested in the writing, the book hit the doldrums. There wasn't much character development happening at that point and there was very little plot to begin with. There was also a portion in the middle where the story seemed to waver about its intent and toyed with becoming almost a mystery. But that petered out. This was when my due date came around, and I decided a break from the book would be the way to go.

And as it turns out, a few weeks away from the book was enough for me to renew my interest and dull my minor annoyances with the writing. I picked it back up and was able to finish it fairly quickly and liked the ending tolerably well. My overall impression was that it was a decent book but nothing to rage about. When I compare it to my reactions to other Pulitzer winners such as The Good Earth, To Kill a Mockingbird, or even All the Light We Cannot See, I have a hard time even giving this four stars. Perhaps I should have rounded down instead of up.

Nick Gracilla

Every five years or so, I come across The Shipping News, a book shrouded in a permafrost of longing, fate, and hopefulness. Each time I clear my afternoons and reread it in a few sittings. Rich in sympathetic characters with sometimes brutal histories, it’s a story of life and its transformations, unfolding in the main at the edges of Newfoundland, where the old ways are slipping away against the tides of modernity. The intensity and rawness of the landscape and the weather play two more characters, occasionally beautiful and also flawed, uncaring, and sometimes cruel. Woven throughout the tale are threads of magical realism, of intuition and second sight, of death surprising, undeserved, and dodged, and the value of seeing differently. All this within an immersive context of cultural knowledge practically lost—winter shipbuilding with hand tools and raw timber, ice hunting and knots (both nautical and magical), home recipes with squid or fin, tea and whiskey, and the memories of generations of family fishermen. A must-read, in times of crisis or otherwise; the kind of book that helps you trim your sails against the next change of wind that’s inevitably coming.

Jayme Bosio

I finally finished this book after I have no idea how many months. I liked the characters; I found Quoyle to be a relatable character and it was nice to "watch" him flourish over time. I even had a strong desire to visit Newfoundland no matter how cold and treacherous a picture the author drew. Still, this book didn't grab me. I enjoyed the writing, but I couldn't wait to be done with the book.

Sarah Escorsa

What a wonderful book! I absolutely loved it from beginning to end, loved the atmosphere, the characters, the writing... everything! Definitely one of my favourite reads so far this year:)

Daryl Houston

Really nicely written, and sufficiently unfamiliar in terms of landscape, local culture, etc., that it held my interest.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is a vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a “head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips,” is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle’s Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family’s unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives. Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above seventy degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it’s easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents). As the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph—in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs; Diddy Shovel the strongman; drowned Herald Prowse; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; silent Wavey; and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets. By the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover’s knot.

Janet Doré

I remember finishing the book and thinking, 'That was okay, good writing, decent story, but not earth shattering'. However, after a couple of years I could still remember everything about the main character and his struggles. I realized that this book had a much bigger impact than I thought, so I rated it higher. The movie with Kevin Spacey is great too.

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