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3.72 AVERAGE
3.72 AVERAGE
I have a fairy godmother who frequents the little free library three blocks from my house. While it is full of the typical crusty Danielle Steel and Reader’s Digest collections and dog-eared easy readers, it is frequently replenished with a touch of magic. Some saintly person drops copies of Euripides and Goethe and Ibsen in there. This is where I found The Shipping News. I hadn’t heard of this Pulitzer Prize winner before that, but I’m so glad I happened upon it.
Quoyle is an oversized man who has always allowed life to happen to him. He has one accidental friend and one accidental romance and one accidental part time career as a seasonal employee at a local newspaper. But his friend moves away, his job gives him the boot, and his wife (who lives with various boyfriends rather than coming home to him and their two daughters) literally sells the children and ditches town. But the children are quickly rescued and she and her boyfriend don’t get far.
Hoping a change of scenery will help them all to recover from the tragedy, Quoyle decides to move back to the Newfoundland coast where his nearly extinct family tree has roots dating back as far as oral traditions can describe. Here, he comes in constant contact with the realities of rural living, violent weather, a dying economy, and seafaring people who are full of life and death. He quickly learns that the Quoyle name is one long linked to concepts like piracy, incest, and lunacy. In a stark new landscape, he is given opportunity and forces to become a participant in his own life rather than someone who watches life pass by without comment. Here he finds death at his doorstep and those of his neighbors, along with opportunities to truly live, work hard, and love well in a way he might come to believe he could deserve.
The Shipping News is a solid and subtly crafted story that is evocative, but the biggest selling point for this book is the incredible craftsmanship of the style. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Proulx does more to redefine the sentence than Hemingway ever could. She blatantly disregards what anyone else would consider a necessity to ensure comprehension. Writes in half sentences that feel like lists of thoughts. Somehow manages to get ideas across more clearly. Uses strange blooming imagery. Primary colored beads of ink dropping and blossoming in clouds across the readers imagination. Watercolor illustration passed with aggressively flippancy. If you get it, you get it completely. If you don’t, you pass on to the next line.
The entire time I was reading this, I felt like I was taking a course on how to develop tone and style as a writer. It was incredibly liberating to read and feel like a writer isn’t obligated to spoon feed explanations of plots or characters or motivations to their readers. The readers who get it will be in the large majority and it will be all the sweeter for its subtlety.
This story is really compelling, harsh and hard to swallow, honest and sometimes aloof, constantly reflecting on life as pain and then death. But it is hopeful and uses the harshest conditions to cause us to reflects on whether life is really worth living and, if so, why and how it should be done.
Quoyle is an oversized man who has always allowed life to happen to him. He has one accidental friend and one accidental romance and one accidental part time career as a seasonal employee at a local newspaper. But his friend moves away, his job gives him the boot, and his wife (who lives with various boyfriends rather than coming home to him and their two daughters) literally sells the children and ditches town. But the children are quickly rescued and she and her boyfriend don’t get far.
Hoping a change of scenery will help them all to recover from the tragedy, Quoyle decides to move back to the Newfoundland coast where his nearly extinct family tree has roots dating back as far as oral traditions can describe. Here, he comes in constant contact with the realities of rural living, violent weather, a dying economy, and seafaring people who are full of life and death. He quickly learns that the Quoyle name is one long linked to concepts like piracy, incest, and lunacy. In a stark new landscape, he is given opportunity and forces to become a participant in his own life rather than someone who watches life pass by without comment. Here he finds death at his doorstep and those of his neighbors, along with opportunities to truly live, work hard, and love well in a way he might come to believe he could deserve.
The Shipping News is a solid and subtly crafted story that is evocative, but the biggest selling point for this book is the incredible craftsmanship of the style. I’m not exaggerating when I say that Proulx does more to redefine the sentence than Hemingway ever could. She blatantly disregards what anyone else would consider a necessity to ensure comprehension. Writes in half sentences that feel like lists of thoughts. Somehow manages to get ideas across more clearly. Uses strange blooming imagery. Primary colored beads of ink dropping and blossoming in clouds across the readers imagination. Watercolor illustration passed with aggressively flippancy. If you get it, you get it completely. If you don’t, you pass on to the next line.
The entire time I was reading this, I felt like I was taking a course on how to develop tone and style as a writer. It was incredibly liberating to read and feel like a writer isn’t obligated to spoon feed explanations of plots or characters or motivations to their readers. The readers who get it will be in the large majority and it will be all the sweeter for its subtlety.
This story is really compelling, harsh and hard to swallow, honest and sometimes aloof, constantly reflecting on life as pain and then death. But it is hopeful and uses the harshest conditions to cause us to reflects on whether life is really worth living and, if so, why and how it should be done.
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I really disliked this book. I don't understand what people liked about it. Quyole (what kind of name is that?) is a lump. Wavey? Tert Card? Billy Pretty? Nutbeem? Every character was way too over-the-top...in name and in deed. It was outlandish and painful to trudge through.
emotional
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I honestly don't understand why people are raving about this book. I found reading this book is such a chore, worse then going to the gym. I stayed with it for as long as I could, but after about 250 pages I knew I couldn't deal with it any more.
I feel poorly but I just couldn't get past the beginning of this book. I know I'm a HEATHEN. I shall pass it onto someone with with sense.
Almost gave up on this one—felt depressing and dark for so long. But I’m glad I stuck with it!
Best fiction of 1993, according to the good folks at Pulitzer and the National Book Award. And with good reason. This book is at once a heart-breaking and heart-mending portrait of a schlumpy single dad who finds healing and happiness in his ancestral home of Newfoundland. I can honestly say The Shipping News is the best book about fishing that I’ve ever read. The entire book is poignant and well-written, the conclusion particularly so.
emotional
funny
reflective
slow-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes