Beauty and the Beast - well of nature anyway. (The Shipping News - Annie Proulx)

Member Name: KingHerrod

Product:	The Shipping News - Annie Proulx
Date:	19/07/02 (1685 review reads)
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I haven't seen the motion picture, The Shipping News, but the book was bought to my attention by virtue of the film. I was listening to an interview with Dame Judi Dench and she happened to mention how wonderful she found the book and so when Tesco's were offering it for just under £2, I ordered it. £2 for a new book is a real bargain.

The Shipping News was penned (or probably word processed) by Annie Proulx a Canadian lady who did not publish her first novel until she was 56, this is her second novel and won the Pulitzer prize, The Irish Times International prize and The National Book Award. Huge gongs then for Annie Proulx and please you haters of books with awards do not be put off by them, despite being liked by critics this is a refreshingly easy book to read about a part of the world that I had not experienced as a location for a novel before.

The Shipping News is set in Newfoundland, Canada, although Newfoundlander's clearly feel about as Canadian as a the Scots do English. I am sure that puts you in the picture. The narrative features the hapless, blundering, tubby Quoyle, a man who the world appears to have blessed with no confidence, little ability and looks that were more likely to open him to ridicule than female lust - what confidence and ability he did have was firmly kicked and beaten out of him by his father. Finding himself as a widower, following the death of his rather horrible and self-centred wife, Pearl, Quoyle is left as single parent with daughters that are a bit of a handful. To add to the mess, his father dies and he loses his job as bit part local reporter for a small local New York newspaper. Enter his Auntie Hamm - who picks him up by the scruff of his neck and persuades him and his daughters to join her in a return to the land of their forefathers, Newfoundland and the old dilapidated family home. Quoyle is to learn that there was more than met the eye to his ancestors and certainly more than meet
s the eye to life on this sleepy backwater of an Island.

Once again Quoyle becomes employed as an average hack - this time on Newfoundland's leading local and "comical" paper, The Gammy Bird. A newspaper specialising in front pages features of car and boat wrecks; as many stories of indecent assault and paedophilia as the paper can get its grubby mitts on (although something about Newfoundland seems to give it a greater share than you would think possible of perverted delinquents); and the shipping news - a bland page of what ships arrived and left the main harbour and from where and to where they are heading. Quoyle has found his niche with the shipping news in more ways that one. Oh and it seems that everyone who appears in court on the island, decides to perform some kind of strip act. The success of the paper serves to illustrate modern societies greed for information about the unfortunate and bizarre, probably so that the readers can feel safe in their own cocooned perceived normality.

Quoyle's loneliness and insecurities seem to abate contained in the cosy life on Newfoundland and slowly but surely he finds himself fitting in and rediscovering his abilities and self-confidence and finding that his new life might just suit him after all.

This is not a book with a huge plot line running through it. It is distinctly character driven rather than plot driven and personally, I often prefer this type of read. There are times where in between chapters whole months have passed and so the narrative can seem a little disjointed in places, but then being a book about people there are times when whole months elapse in a person's life and all that person has done is follow their little routine. This is a book about people and how they can find themselves again after years of punishment by modern society. It is about nature and how people still live away from all the mod-cons of society, although, Newfoundland suffers a
t the hands of the modern global economy with its waters being fished dry by corporate powers and large trawlers with the result that locals struggle to adapt to a life without fishing and look for other ways to earn their keep. This is also a book very much about love in its different forms, for Quoyle love has always led to bad things, an abusive father and in certain ways an abusive wife. Proulx beautifully points out that love can mean all kinds of different things for different people and different things at different times of their lives. In Newfoundland Quoyle is told that there are four kinds of woman "The Demon Lover. The Stout-hearted Woman. Maids in the Meadows. The Tall Quiet Woman." Maybe to pigeon hole all types of women into four categories is a little on the generalist side, but this observation does hold merit.

The Shipping News also has a comical side, Quoyle has a habit of observing his life experiences as a headline writer would and at times these boil life down to its ultimate ridiculous simplicity and capture the whole essence of a scene in the book in a few words, whilst giving the reader a few laugh out loud moments. "Man with hangover listens to boat project variables." "Newspaper reporter seems magnet for dead men!" "Girl fears white dog, relatives marvellously upset!" There are probably about 50 or so of these strewn through the book and they add marvellous light relief.

This is an easy flowing book, whilst it is certainly not fast paced, meandering along at the speed of an eccentric Newfoundlander's life (slow), it is deeply absorbing. The style captures the local dialect and slang moreover, the dialogue in the novel really brings its sometimes larger than life characters to life in the mind. The book features a rich tapestry of characters depicting a society in flux, the older are more eccentric and wish just to be left to fish, whilst the younger generation real
ise that the old Newfoundland ways are fading fast and something else has to take the place of fishing, but what? The descriptions of storms really make you feel that you could be wrapped up warm in a cosy Newfoundland house whilst the sea and wind rages all around you and this ability to transport the reader to almost a different world with an easy writing style is to be much admired.

The Shipping News is clever, intelligent, moving, observant on the nuances of social interaction, comical and in a way it has a rugged beauty, much I expect like the coast of a storm battered island has. But most of all The Shipping News is a strangely uplifting read. This is a very good book, that I deeply enjoyed, but I was left wondering why it has had so much critical acclaim, there are lots of good books out there that don't find this. Perhaps it is because the character of Quoyle is one that I will never forget.

Published by Fourth Estate.

Priced £6.99 in paperback, or £5.59 plus postage and packaging from amazon.co.uk.

ISBN 1-84115-059-2.

Further details of all Fourth Estate books and authors can be found at www.4thestate.com.

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