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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
There are those books that sit on your shelf for a long time. When you finally work up the resolve to crack them open, you can’t believe you postponed your enjoyment so long. And then, for me, there is this book. I don’t know if I have ever given a score as low as tow stars. I always temper a review like this with the disclaimer that it is always possible that I just missed its genius. It is indeed a different writing style - quite choppy. I could never quite settle into its flow. It can be interesting to get to “travel” to a different country in a book, but I really don’t feel as though the book meant to deliver a full experience of Newfoundland. The main character was kind of”meh” for me. I was rooting for him because of what he had been through. And none of the secondary characters drew me in either. I will say that the last few lines are quite brilliant though.
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Proulx develops interesting, everyday, relatable characters. The slow plot is intentional to depict everyday life in a small Newfoundland town and traces generations of family to define home, place, love, history, and tradition.
Annie Proulx didn't write her first novel until she was 56 years old and that really is something of an inspiration if you are plugging away at your craft. Keep at it, don't stop. If Annie did the world would have been denied this beautifully crafted novel.
The sense of place and depth of characters that Proulx is able to create from the most economic use of words is nothing short of amazing. The plot of this novel, structured in an almost episodic fashion, creeps up on you in the same way that the realisation that love can come without pain creeps up on our protagonist Quoyle.
The Shipping News explores themes that we have seen so many times before, finding yourself and your home and your sense of purpose and love, but puts them together in a truly fresh and inspiring way. This is done by not showing us plot but by letting us inhabit each of these characters as they discover the plot for us and, in turn, showing us why these themes are so universal.
The sense of place and depth of characters that Proulx is able to create from the most economic use of words is nothing short of amazing. The plot of this novel, structured in an almost episodic fashion, creeps up on you in the same way that the realisation that love can come without pain creeps up on our protagonist Quoyle.
The Shipping News explores themes that we have seen so many times before, finding yourself and your home and your sense of purpose and love, but puts them together in a truly fresh and inspiring way. This is done by not showing us plot but by letting us inhabit each of these characters as they discover the plot for us and, in turn, showing us why these themes are so universal.
This book actually snuck up on me. The first thing I noticed (and was much impressed with) was Proulx's writing style. She writes in these short clipped "sentences" which sometimes aren't even whole sentences but somehow, it just works beautifully. Her writing style mimics the content of the book in a way that true lovers of English have to admire. I have to say this review will be surely lacking in stylistic beauty as Proulx's writing in this one. The turbulent style almost a physical representation of the hardships of the story's characters. The choppy style in the beginning demands your attention and therefore almost forces the reader to pay such close attention that before long you have gone through a hundred pages in passionate, late night voraciousness. At least that was how it was for me.
This book wasn't a passionate "feelings" book where you really have to get to the end just to find out what happens. The love for Quoyle and his girls, the aunt, Wavey, Billy, Dennis, Beety, Jack, Nutbeam...(catch my drift) is so subtle and solidly built. Not until there is a significant event do you find yourself hoping for good outcomes or wishing that Proulx would have left things alone. Not until the end are you wanting for things to just work out for once....because dammit sometimes life shouldn't end in heartbreak and tragedy. I became so deeply entranced by each unique character and their influence in this story that it quite literally snuck up on me, a genuine love for these carefully crafted characters.
Proulx uses her pen to paint a picture of the harsh and unyielding setting of Newfoundland in a way that makes you cringe and want to stop reading for fear that the words on the pages might come to actualization and you'd wake up to find yourself in a torrential downpour of salty sea water blinded by razored shards of ice with the smell of dead cod in the air. I never read a book where I literally wanted to go outside to read and soak up the sun because the cold, dreariness of a book seeped out the pages.
A beautiful, moving piece that is well worth the Pulitzer Prize that Proulx was awarded. I'm glad I finally made my way around to this one and equally satisfied that the movie is on Netflix. I know the movie most likely won't be 50% as beautiful as the book, but I can't quite let go of them just yet.
This book wasn't a passionate "feelings" book where you really have to get to the end just to find out what happens. The love for Quoyle and his girls, the aunt, Wavey, Billy, Dennis, Beety, Jack, Nutbeam...(catch my drift) is so subtle and solidly built. Not until there is a significant event do you find yourself hoping for good outcomes or wishing that Proulx would have left things alone. Not until the end are you wanting for things to just work out for once....because dammit sometimes life shouldn't end in heartbreak and tragedy. I became so deeply entranced by each unique character and their influence in this story that it quite literally snuck up on me, a genuine love for these carefully crafted characters.
Proulx uses her pen to paint a picture of the harsh and unyielding setting of Newfoundland in a way that makes you cringe and want to stop reading for fear that the words on the pages might come to actualization and you'd wake up to find yourself in a torrential downpour of salty sea water blinded by razored shards of ice with the smell of dead cod in the air. I never read a book where I literally wanted to go outside to read and soak up the sun because the cold, dreariness of a book seeped out the pages.
A beautiful, moving piece that is well worth the Pulitzer Prize that Proulx was awarded. I'm glad I finally made my way around to this one and equally satisfied that the movie is on Netflix. I know the movie most likely won't be 50% as beautiful as the book, but I can't quite let go of them just yet.
Despite boasting a Pulitzer Prize and a big-name Hollywood adaptation, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is an unhurried and unconventional novel, a simple story which nonetheless requires a fair amount of thought to get the best out of. It follows the life of a man referred to only as Quoyle, one of life’s permanent losers, burdened with crippling self doubt and never quite able to succeed at anything he does. When his painful marriage comes to a harrowing end, he takes his daughters and joins his aunt in returning to the home of his ancestors in the wilderness of Newfoundland, where he tries to start his life over again.
Read the rest of the review at https://trackofwords.wordpress.com/2015/08/22/the-shipping-news-annie-proulx/
Read the rest of the review at https://trackofwords.wordpress.com/2015/08/22/the-shipping-news-annie-proulx/
adventurous
funny
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Proulx’s mastery of vocabulary is absolutely staggering. I found myself pausing repeatedly to pick sentences apart word for word in an attempt to understand how Proulx had assembled them so beautifully. If the exceptional prose isn’t enough for you, the story is both funny and tender to its core. It’s about a man becoming a man he can respect, set amidst the enchanting atmosphere of a Newfoundland fishing town.
I've heard of Annie Proulx, of course, but felt a renewed urge to pursue her work after reading a synopsis for Barkskins. All I knew of this going in is that it's simultaneously accused of being too 'literary' for its themes and too 'mainstream' for the Pulitzer.
I enjoyed the writing, it's whimsical and detached but occasionally swoops in, centering in on a character's feelings during an intense moment:
This style elevates the plot from a familial melodrama to something more magical. The atmosphere of Omaloore Bay and Killick-Claw reminded me a lot of the setting of The Many by Wyl Menmuir, despite one being in dreary Cornwall, and the other in Newfoundland. There's a similar veneration for the sea, a similar loss in agency for the locals, but where the Many spirals into a depressive psychosis, Proulx's novel is uplifting and gentle on its characters - which, I suspect, is why it wasn't favoured by the Literati.
The characters are all difficult people with an underlying goodness. At times this goodness feels a bit strange. For example, Wavey, Dennis, and Betsy - Newfoundland natives - are all a little too nice to Quoyle and his family, none of them seem to have any personality twitches or flaws. Wavey in particular seems to have been designed for Quoyle and I had a hard time understanding Proulx's choice to make her so flat.
Quoyle himself is a very sympathetic character who is portrayed, well, like a loser from the offset. He never really has any confidence or drive and shambles from one role to another until tragedy strikes. So I enjoyed watching him come into his own to become such a tremendous parent.
I also really enjoyed the snippets from The Ashley Book of Knots inserted at the start of each chapter. Partly because I tried to remake these knots and partly using them to guess what turns the story would take next.
What I'll remember most about this book is the Newfoundland landscape and the Gammy Bird. It was a cosy and quirky read that got me through a stressful period and I'll return to it fondly.
I enjoyed the writing, it's whimsical and detached but occasionally swoops in, centering in on a character's feelings during an intense moment:
Wavey ran to get away, then for the sake of running, and at last because there was nothing else to do. It would look undecided to change her pace, as though she did not know what she wanted. It seemed always that she had to keep on performing pointless acts.
This style elevates the plot from a familial melodrama to something more magical. The atmosphere of Omaloore Bay and Killick-Claw reminded me a lot of the setting of The Many by Wyl Menmuir, despite one being in dreary Cornwall, and the other in Newfoundland. There's a similar veneration for the sea, a similar loss in agency for the locals, but where the Many spirals into a depressive psychosis, Proulx's novel is uplifting and gentle on its characters - which, I suspect, is why it wasn't favoured by the Literati.
The characters are all difficult people with an underlying goodness. At times this goodness feels a bit strange. For example, Wavey, Dennis, and Betsy - Newfoundland natives - are all a little too nice to Quoyle and his family, none of them seem to have any personality twitches or flaws. Wavey in particular seems to have been designed for Quoyle and I had a hard time understanding Proulx's choice to make her so flat.
Quoyle himself is a very sympathetic character who is portrayed, well, like a loser from the offset. He never really has any confidence or drive and shambles from one role to another until tragedy strikes. So I enjoyed watching him come into his own to become such a tremendous parent.
I also really enjoyed the snippets from The Ashley Book of Knots inserted at the start of each chapter. Partly because I tried to remake these knots and partly using them to guess what turns the story would take next.
What I'll remember most about this book is the Newfoundland landscape and the Gammy Bird. It was a cosy and quirky read that got me through a stressful period and I'll return to it fondly.
This book was excellent. I loved that the whole book had a very specific mood to it - cold, windy, salty. While the movie was also pretty fantastic, the book allows for so much more depth in the characters, and poor Quoyle is just so devastatingly pathetic. It's awesome. It also makes me want to visit the cold, blustery east coast of Canada.
Alright, so this book starts slowly as you get to know the people and the situation. And really, who doesn't want to slap Petal?
But as the action picks up, and you become accustomed to the humor and lull of the narrative, not unlike that of the Newfoundland waves, it becomes a book that can be slammed through in a weekend. The descriptions of the landscape put the reader right into the middle of the island life, feeling the rain, smelling the fetid hotel rooms, tasting the salt on the air. Quoyle and 'the aunt' Agnis are both funny characters, especially their asides. Then, there is the entire cast of the Gammy Bird newspaper, and the rest of the islanders who are as unique in their voices as the rocks around Newfoundland. Proulx does a brilliant job in character building, as well as world building.
In all, there is life-at-sea and life-on-the-world's-edge that is interesting and dramatic. A world away from what most of us know. A life that seems pure and rough all at once, with genuine people who band together to help each other other, even someone who is ostensibly an outsider from the States. Mixed in with the brilliance of life and worries of death, the ebb of tides, is gentle humor, childlike wonder, and a story with love, even when love seems impossible.
But as the action picks up, and you become accustomed to the humor and lull of the narrative, not unlike that of the Newfoundland waves, it becomes a book that can be slammed through in a weekend. The descriptions of the landscape put the reader right into the middle of the island life, feeling the rain, smelling the fetid hotel rooms, tasting the salt on the air. Quoyle and 'the aunt' Agnis are both funny characters, especially their asides. Then, there is the entire cast of the Gammy Bird newspaper, and the rest of the islanders who are as unique in their voices as the rocks around Newfoundland. Proulx does a brilliant job in character building, as well as world building.
In all, there is life-at-sea and life-on-the-world's-edge that is interesting and dramatic. A world away from what most of us know. A life that seems pure and rough all at once, with genuine people who band together to help each other other, even someone who is ostensibly an outsider from the States. Mixed in with the brilliance of life and worries of death, the ebb of tides, is gentle humor, childlike wonder, and a story with love, even when love seems impossible.