Literary Fiction · WarmA reporter starts over in Newfoundland
The Shipping News
by Annie Proulx
After a series of losses, a reporter takes his daughters to the Newfoundland home of his ancestors
Quoyle, a reporter from upstate New York, has lost his parents and then his estranged wife, Petal. At the urging of his aunt, Agnis Hamm, he takes his two young daughters to the ancestral home in Newfoundland, an abandoned house on Quoyle's Point. In the small town of Killick-Claw he becomes a reporter for the Gammy Bird, covering car accidents and the shipping news.
More about this book
Who
Quoyle, a newspaper reporter; his two young daughters; and his aunt Agnis Hamm, who persuades him to move. His wife Petal dies before the story begins.
World
Upstate New York at the start, then Killick-Claw, a small town in Newfoundland, and the old family house on Quoyle's Point.
What makes it different
Each chapter opens with a quotation from The Ashley Book of Knots, and several names, including Quoyle and Killick, come from knots and rope terms. It won the National Book Award and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and was made into a 2001 film.
Feel
A cold, salty setting with a warm human story. The prose is made of short fragments and vivid detail.
Page count and cover shown for: Selected edition
Behind the book
Proulx credits Clifford W. Ashley's The Ashley Book of Knots (1944) as the inspiration for the book, saying that without it the novel would have remained just a thread of an idea. Ashley's illustrations and quotations serve as chapter headings.
Source: Wikipedia
Further reading
- The Shipping NewsWikipedia