The Shipping News by Annie ProulxMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
It has taken me far too long to read this Pulitzer Prize winner by Annie Proulx (first published in 1993). Too busy with other commitments for a while. Returning to The Shipping News from time to time was akin to putting on a favourite pair of slippers. Comfortable. This tale is a gem, almost poetry.
The main protagonist is known only as Quoyle. A hapless, hopeless journalist living and working in New York. He is ashamed of his physical appearance - a large, jutting chin is his main embarrassment. It doesn’t help his marriage to his no-good wife Petal. She likes sleeping around and makes no secret of it. Perhaps it is justice then when she is killed in a spectacular road accident. The bereft Quoyle sets out with his two daughters to the land of his forefathers - the remote corners of far-flung Newfoundland, accompanied by his aunt, a woman of remarkable talents when it comes to - upholstery. Quoyle takes up the post of shipping news reporter on the Gammy Bird. There’s a name for you!
The characterisation is perfect. So many individuals who add so much to this gentle story. Names like Jack Buggit (the newspaper proprietor), Mavis Bangs, Dawn Budgel, Alvin Yark and Tert Card who all speak a dialect that took Proulx two years to master with a Newfoundland dictionary. And all of this against the backdrop of a cruel and empty land, towering icebergs with cores of beryl, blue gems within white gems, on cliffs where the wind has blown so hard for so long that the trees are no more than chest-high, gnarled into natural bonsai called tuckamore (I had to Google it!).
The Shipping News is a wonderful, slowly unfolding and exhilarating Atlantic drama, a slow burner with a perfect ending. I loved it.
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