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    The Shipping News
    The Shipping News
    The Shipping News
    Audiobook (abridged)5 hours

    The Shipping News

    Written by Annie Proulx

    Narrated by Robert Joy

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster Audio
    Release dateDec 1, 2001
    ISBN9780743540575
    The Shipping News
    Author

    Annie Proulx

    Annie Proulx is the author of nine books, including the novel The Shipping News, Barkskins and the story collection Close Range. Her many honors include a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Award, the Irish Times International Fiction Prize, and a PEN/Faulkner award. Her story ‘Brokeback Mountain,’ which originally appeared in The New Yorker, was made into an Academy Award-winning film. She lives in New Hampshire.

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    Reviews for The Shipping News

    4/5

    137 ratings114 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I loved this book! Had to read it two or three times :)
    • 5/5
      A man from a family with nothing to recommend it returns to his ancestral home to find himself. Marked by quirky characters and poetic prose The Shipping News takes the reader to the wind scoured shores of Newfoundland to discover, with Quoyle, the meanings of life, death, love and family.
    • 5/5
      The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx is a book I had never heard of until I started my Bucket List project. However, everyone I talked to about it seems to have read it. It reaffirms the necessity of my taking on this reading project. As with the other works of fiction I have read recently I am not going to go into a whole lot of detail as there may be a very few of you that has not read it.

      After a rough start I ended up really enjoying this book quite a bit.

      The main problem I had at the beginning was the writing style. A lot of short clipped sentences with no transition between them caught me off guard at first. In some cases years in the life of the main character ? Quoyle ? are related in less than 20 words. However as I read more I found myself getting used to it, and by the end really enjoying how it made the story flow.

      In the end this is a lovely story of a man, generally a failure, who finds himself and his niche in life by moving to Newfoundland ? the ancestral home of his family. There he finds his place in life among a series of very quirkly and eclectic set of people.

      The author stated in an interview the inspiration for this work was a book about knots?specicially knots used by those whose livelihood is based on the sea. Most chapters start with a brief description of a knot and its purpose; that description becomes the theme for what happens to the characters during its course. A very cool way to tell the story of the main character ? Quoyle ? whose name is a form of the word coil; an integral part of all of the knots described in the book.

      If it sounds on the surface this book is free from the kind of tragedy and depravity that is endemic to our species fear not?it is there. Murder, rape, accidental death, crime and punishment are all a part of the story. Yet, by the end I think you will find yoruself uplifted.

      Highly Recommended!!

    • 5/5
      Proulx's "happy book." A pretty amazing journey of one buffoon into character and laughter.
    • 5/5
      unforgettable characters..and insightful chapter openings...her best work..
    • 5/5
      A big sad, hard-scrabble novel, full of unpleasant characters and situations one doesn't want to like. Overall a completely satisfying book by one of the best writers in English of the last 100 years. This novel was made into a movie that's quite good in its own right, though it misses much of the novel, and of course turns it into a love story.
    • 4/5
      It took me a while to get into this book. However, my appreciation of Proulx's descriptive metaphors kept me intrigued and the book improved.Quoyle's cheating wife is killed in a car accident with her lover. He makes the decision to move from New York with his aunt and two young daughters to his family's ancestral home in Newfoundland. With a job at a small town newspaper, the lumpish middle-aged Quoyle becomes immersed in life in the harsh landscape and the fantastically diverse people who make their home there. "These waters, thought Quoyle, haunted by lost ships, fishermen, explorers gurgled down into sea holes as black as a dog's throat" (p. 222). "He came up once last summer, but left after two days. On his way to New Zealand to study some kind of exotic Southern Hemisphere crab" (p. 267). "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 centres as bitter as gall, some blended honey and poison, some were quickly swallowed. And among the common bull's-eye and peppermints a few rare ones; one or two with deadly needles at the heart, another that brought calm and gentle pleasure. Were his fingers closing on that one?" (p. 332). Beautifully written.
    • 3/5
      Quirky tale of Newfoundland - ordinary people & awful weather.Read Samoa July 2003
    • 5/5
      Superb, quirky writing style. No movie could do justice to the book.
    • 4/5
      Pulitzer prize for fictionI don't think I would ever have chosen this book for myself, so I'm really glad that my book club did. The first half is so bleak - Quoyle's life is so tiring. I quote from the end of Chapter 17 "Thirty-six years old and this was the first time anyone ever said he'd done it right." The story climbs from there. And while Quoyle never soars he does experience some highs and a lot of good even sailing. Definitely worth reading.
    • 4/5
      This is the story of a lumbering giant of a man, a failure in life and love. He loses his unfaithful, nymphomaniac, wife in a car crash. He recovers his children, who have been sold by his late wife and her late lover to paedophiles, and tries to rebuild his life. His parents die in a suicide pact, and this event brings him into contact with his elderly, lesbian aunt. Together they set off to Newfoundland, her childhood home. Newfoundland is the scene for the rest of the book, and a theme of how one man learns to accept himself, is set against a background of Newfoundland life, with its hardships and its rewards convincingly drawn. I really enjoyed this book. It is nothing like the film, none of the characters are wholly sympathetic, none of them are good looking, in fact Quoyle is an ugly man with a huge chin, and his love interest, Wavey, is a tall plain woman, edging toward middle-age. Prouxl writes dialogue in an unusual way, direct speech, is often followed by 'direct thought', with the character giving us inner dialogue, a little odd at first, as she doesn't delineate this from ordinary narrative text, I thought it was an effective way to give the characters an extra dimension, though I can imagine that purists would think it cheating.
    • 5/5
      Story of Quoyle, a man married to a bitch of a woman Petal whom he stays with depote the fact that she cheats on him and does nothing to care for their two daughers. Quoyles parents die and long lost aunt comes into the picture when Petal also dies trying to get away from Quoyle. The aunt decides they need to go back to their homeland in Newfoundland and then the story really takes off. About Quoyles life as a newspaperman, tying to raise two kids while the aunt reconstructs the old family home. Quoyle really comes into himself and is no longer the beat down man Petal made him into. Excellant book. While I love E Annie Proulx I have no idea what set tis book apart from all her others and made it into a Pulitzer Prize winning novel.
    • 4/5
      This was a good read. I liked the story and the writing style was interestingly different, although it did take a bit to get used to. I like how the author gently ties the strings of his life together, instead of beating you in the face with the "message" over and over. It's subtle and enjoyable.
    • 1/5
      So dark, depressing and bleak I could not get very far into this book. No matter how many times people told me it has a happy ending, my feeling is that it's not worth the slog.
    • 3/5
      The novel was excellent and I see myself reading it again. I found it in a used bookstore. I love used bookstores. I went in with high hopes that I would be able to find another Barbara Pym novel or find ?Whistling in the Dark.? I looked over the stock and found ?The Shipping News.?I?ll be honest, I wasn?t looking for ?The Shipping News.? Yet the proprietor was so nice, I just couldn?t leave without buying something ? and I needed a book. Well, I thought to myself let?s see if the Pulitzer Prize can still pick ?em.They did all right picking this one. My Mother was born in Canada, when I was in grade school, she raised her right hand and swore allegiance, to the United States. Whenever we don?t see eye to eye on something I begin to sing ?Oh Canada.? The Shipping News was not about life in Canada ? oddly enough it reflected more of what life is not in the United States. Like a dog to a bone, I keep going back to the Christian way of life and how it is nothing like it ought to be in here in the good ole U.S.A. Yeah we have big churches, lots of emotion, tons of lights and nobody knows anyone. Not so in ?The Shipping News,? and Ms Proulx does not let the reader over look the fact that Christians are less than they ought to be ? a minor theme in the story a major theme to me. Anyway ? Great: ?The Shipping News?? Newfoundland is different. I was twelve when found myself in Newfoundland. I was 12 in 1976 and it was in May and I was with my Grandmother ? another Canadian ? and we were freezing our back ends off trying to board a plane to England. And then freezing our butts off trying to board a plane to Chicago. Oh the impressions that stick when is twelve. That rock, that cold gray rock of Newfoundland, I nearly wanted to kiss the ground of Chicago, the lights the sounds the ? home. I was home with all its raw energy and violence but that desolation of cold was not forgotten. It left an impression. So when I felt compelled to spend money in a used book store because the proprietor tried to help me but couldn?t find what I was looking for ? well I thought why not ?The Shipping News.?Pulitzer PrizeCanadaNewfoundland. How could I go wrong?So at the end of the novel, feeling raw again because I am a Christian and depressed because the church can?t seem to reflect Christ and it shows up continually in our literature I was out of breath, sad and still glad I read the book. The author?s style, slowed me down ? a good thing. Her humor ? she had me laughing aloud more than once. The characters, I might be a pottering old fool someday ? I hope the characters never leave me. I?d recommend this book.
    • 5/5
      I only read this recently, and was very impressed.
    • 2/5
      Pretentious language. I didn't care about the characters. Hadda read it for school.
    • 4/5
      I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked this book up but I was pleasantly surprised. The author has an interesting writing style where she uses a lot of short sentences to keep the book moving along. It could get a bit overwhelming at time with the amount of fishing and/or Newfoundland slang and technical terms but I persevered and thought it was worth it. One criticism is that the main characters first name is never revealed. It's always "Quoyle" or "the Nephew" or some such. A minor flaw but like an annoying itch. All up it's definitely worth reading.
    • 3/5
      The Shipping News is very well-written. It?s poetic, and a good example of realism. The characters are sincere and believable.
    • 5/5
      Really enjoyed this quiet understated novel.
    • 4/5
      That a character like Quoyle exists is no surprise at all; a cuckolded husband with two daughters that have already learned not to respect him, an aimless life that has largely not been of his choosing, few true friends to call on and family that largely appears on the fringes to remind him that he is living the life he has earned. That a car accident and the appearance of his force-of-nature aunt who takes him to Newfoundland and a job with The Gammy Bird as the writer of a boating column is the magic of Proulx. The Shipping News is a slow novel, lapping up moods and changes in the same way that the seas change their landscapes. Bit by bit, story by story, the characters in Killick-Claw, Newfoundland reveal and run away from their bigger problems as they work through the day to day. Every once in a while a major event moves them closer towards major change, but sometimes it doesn't, or sometimes hands are absolutely forced through extreme acts...but things are definitely not moved forward in simplistic, "now that our scenery has changed, our lives can change!" fashion. The payoff is simple, but it is worth it. In a way, it resembles life. It rarely is the big sweeping changes that we'll experience. There may be major events around us and big things may happen to us, but these are the things that mark the passage of time and often aren't as wholly life-changing as we'd like to think as they may only change the appearance of people and places. Instead, it is the nearly imperceptible daily erosion of things that allows us the ability to be just different enough to make all the difference.
    • 4/5
      Annie Proulx isn't for everyone, but I love her stuff. Is she still writing--anybody know?
    • 5/5
      An all time favorite. I loved the writing.
    • 4/5
      When Quoyle's awful wife is killed in a car accident, he makes a sudden decision to move from New York to Newfoundland with his aunt and two young daughters. Working at a small town newspaper, Quoyle becomes immersed in the oddities of life on the Rock and the idiosyncracies of the people who call it home.This book was a rough start for me. The writing style did not pull me in at all as Proulx writes the novel of Quoyle's life using the sentence structure that makes up newspaper articles. Streams of short sentences interspersed with endless lists. And Quoyle himself was a protagonist that it took ages to warm to. But in the end the book dug into me and held on; caught me with sad and funny anecdotes of the characters that make up the small town in Newfoundland that Proulx creates. A slower read that could easily be dipped in and out of, it may leave deeper impressions in my memory than I would have originally anticipated.
    • 3/5
      one of Zada's favorites, I liked it but didn't love it. Maybe just not in the right mood for it.
    • 5/5
      One of my favorite contemporary novels.
    • 2/5
      I don't really like Proulx's terse writing style, but it's a perfect match for this story and setting.
    • 3/5
      All right, this book wasn't bad, but I found it incredibly boring. It's about pretty normal people living pretty normal lives in Newfoundland, which is not normal to me so learning about that was the most interesting part.
    • 5/5
      Wonderfully atmospheric. Your can almost feel the cold and taste the salt on the sea breeze. Don't be put off if you did not like the film, this book is excellent
    • 4/5
      I had a great deal of trouble caring about the characters in this book. I knew I should care, but I really found that I didn't. The book had a gray hue to it from the start... it lightened a bit by the end, but I kept finding myself looking to see just how much more of the book I had in front of me!!Mind you, I did like the art of Annie's writing; she is a very talented writer. The short, choppy, incomplete sentences were very cool - she said a great deal with these little packets. I found myself laughing from time to time... I'm sure this is someone's idea of a perfect book - I feel that I must have missed something deeper. Ah well, there are many more books to read, time to move on.