The Shipping News
by E Annie Proulx
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 Prize
Canada
Newfoundland.
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.
Nutbeem influenced by the lunar cycle. Had a touch of the werewolf. At full moon he burst, talked himself dry, took exercise in the form of dancing and fighting at the Starlight Lounge, then slowly fell back to contemplation.
“Mavis Bangs kept talking. ‘Tell you a woman that fished along side her man was Mrs. Buggit. Put the babies with her sister and out they’d go. She was as strong as a man they said. Mrs. Buggit don’t go out now, only to the clothesline. She suffers from stress incontinence, they calls it. She can’t hold her water. When She stands up or laughs or coughs or whatever. A problem. They was trying to get her to do some exercises, you know, stop and go, stop and go, she said it didn’t make a bit of difference except they noticed the dog would stand in front of the bathroom door when she was in there and act real concerned. ‘”
“Quoyle was not going back to New York either. If life was an arc of light that began in darkness, ended in darkness, the first part of his life had happened in ordinary glare. Here it was a thought he had found a polarized lens that deepened and intensified all seen through it. Thought of his stupid self in Mockingburg, taking whatever came at him. No wonder love had shot him through the heart and lungs, caused internal bleeding. “
