#10 "The Shipping News" by Anne Proulx

I must've taken a wrong turn in Albuquerque!

Both girls are taking their late morning naps, wife in the garage attempting to clear out space that was once allotted as a scrap booking room for her. Now it's just been a collection for plastic grocery bags, garage sale items, and other decorations that need to find a new place. As I look outside at a gloomy November day, a couple weeks away from Thanksgiving, our second favorite holiday, I am not happy looking at this 15 foot long mound of earth protruding out of what is now our front yard. We
had plumbing issues and now it looks like Bugs Bunny has burrowed through our yard. Anybody still remember those cartoons?

I won't take too much time writing my thoughts on this novel.



This is a story about a man named Quoyle and his journey from his abusive home living in New York to his new home in Newfoundland, Canada where he begins to rectify his life. In the company of his 2 teenage daughters and with the assistance of his aunt and a close friend he is hired on with a local newspaper in Killick-Claw to report on traffic accidents and, you guessed it, the shipping news while helping to repair his aunt's childhood home that's been abandoned for decades which will become their new house.


I won't lie, I had a dictionary and my iPhone handy for much of my reading. The main setting is on Newfoundlands' coastal regions and I am very unaware of nautical terminology and frankly the variety of words we have in our English language to describe basically the same stuff. She liked to compare one thing I've never heard of to another thing I've

Can you see the boat?

never heard of. It was infuriating! Anyone know what an Eskimo knife looks like? She compares a ship to an Eskimo knife in appearance. Instead of calling it a ship, its a skiff or the actual names of vessels that I've never heard of. Reading this reminded me of when I was reading a "An Army at Dawn" a WWII book. It was geared towards those that know an advanced working of military terminology. It wasn't fun having to look up words in every sentence. Forget about it!!



Boats!

Boat by iceberg

Besides my ignorance of the sea life I was very surprised with the style of Anne Proulx's writing. I was led to believe in correct sentence structure as the only mode of writing. In high school and college I was hounded by my teachers to correct my punctuation and run on sentences to the point when I had to write a paper in college I would avoid it at all costs. So reading "The Shipping News" I was surprised about the amount of incomplete sentences. Sometimes just one word sentences. Besides all these unfortunate surprises I trudged along and found the novel to be slightly entertaining. If it was boring I don't think I would have finished it but put it on hold for later in hopes that someone would buy it for me in audio form. Even with her unusual writing style I enjoyed many parts of it. Her abrupt sentence structure was a quick way to describe the environment these characters were a part of. For instance, I walk outside. Trees blowing. Limbs appear to be playing a tune. Sun hidden. Gloomy. This is somewhat of what it was like to read it but much more beautifully done.

A Skiff

I think this novel is on "The List" and that it won a Pulitzer Prize for Anne Proulx's creativeness in describing life's experiences, her unusual writing style, the amount of detail of the life of a Newfoundlander living by the sea, and the intriguing story of Quoyle's life. For some people this could be a great read but for me it was long. I gather that many great books have an element of educating the reader and this one certainly had that but it lacked character development. Dialogue, relationships, and the overall story were placed on the back burner to the description of other components in the novel. The life living on the cusp of the sea in Newfoundland. Although it was interesting at times I just hoped there was more about Quoyles transformation and his job working at the newspaper. There were a few times of possible excitement such as a possible investigation into a murder on the sea but it faltered into more talk about boats. Oh well.