The Shipping Newsby E. Annie Proulx (1993)
A few years back when I decided to become 'a reader', I decided to start with The Shipping News, for no particular reason other than I had a passing fascination with the maritime world, and because it had one the Pulitzer Prize. As it turned out, the book left a really big impression on me, and I enjoyed it very much.
It tells the story of Quoyle, a guy used to being walked all over, as he starts a new life in Newfoundland, after his cheating wife leaves. He becomes a writer for a small local newspaper, and begins to rebuild his life with his two young daughters, encountering his strange Aunt, and Wavey, a woman in the town that he befriends.
Proulx's writing is really beautiful- freeform sentences without a lot of punctuation (the library copy I read had been annoyingly 'corrected' by a previous reader, commas and paragraph breaks inserted here and there!), and is genuinely moving. A rewarding, not too difficult read.
5 comments:
What!? No one should be marking public library books.
I haven't read this one, but I read couple of Proulx's other books; none of them makes me want to visit Texas...ever.
I have only read this one, and Postcards, which I didn't think was as good or enjoyable as The Shipping News.
Yeah, the writing in the library book was only on pencil. But you could see they had pressed very hard-- they were obviously rather cross with the author and her grammatical neglect.
Writing in books horrifies me!
I found this book quite sad actually (I tend to find that with the award winners, for some reason - maybe that they all write about such depressing things!)
the year i did the hsc, they had a passage from this book which you had to comment on it was "sight unseen" but fortunately i had read it, and it had left such an impression that i remembered it.
i felt pretty good about that...
but then there wasn't much else to feel good about in that exam!!
Amy- yeah, it is a sad book, I guess. But there was enough in it to keep me bouyed. I kinda like writing in books.. I like to read other peoples' notes.
Thora- Good stuff:) I wish I had have done something good like this for my hsc
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