by D.Chazan

Created on: July 25, 2011   Last Updated: July 29, 2011

“The Shipping News” is a story about a man called Quoyle, which sounds unusual, but actually means "a coil of rope". Already with the naming of this character, author Annie Proulx suggests his life is a tangled one. As the book opens, the reader is told:

"Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.

"Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing. He ate prodigiously, liked a ham knuckle, buttered spuds."

The amount of information packed into this opening is truly enormous. With this, you can probably picture him already, not to mention feel how awkward his life has been. Proulx's poetic and deft prose pulls the reader in and allows him to get tangled into his life, even before the first page has been turned. This quiet and simple man could be called "accidentally interesting". By that, he seems to be less a man of action and more of a victim. His physical attributes also impress with this feeling as he is described as being lumbering in size and with a protruding chin. Even this is used by Proulx as a metaphor for Quoyle’s life.

The focus of the story here is two-fold. First, the reader learns that Quoyle's was desperately in love with his wife. With her, he had two daughters (both of whom he totally adores), but she never really loved him and constantly cheated on him. Moreover, she turned her spite against him so much that her meanness and cruelty to him became an art form. This so much affected him that after she died, he was still unable to stop being infatuated with this horrible woman. Unsurprisingly, the one thing he thinks can do to remove himself and his girls from all the painful memories, is to move them all away. This is second part of this tale - Quoyle's return to his ancestral home, in Newfoundland, which was long abandoned. With him he takes his two daughters, and his Aunt, who brings along her dog.

Proulx’s choice of the sparsely populated Newfoundland as a setting will be unfamiliar to most readers. From reading this, the reader finds out just how beautiful and starkly wild this fascinating place is. Through her descriptions of the landscape, Proulx lays brush to canvas in pictures that describe a

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