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The Shipping News
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- For the indie rock band, see Shipping News.
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| Author | E. Annie Proulx |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Novel |
| Publisher | Scribner |
| Released | 1993 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-684-19337-X (hardback edition) |
The Shipping News is a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by E. Annie Proulx which was published in 1993. It was adapted into a film of the same name, released in 2001.
Contents |
The story centers on Quoyle, a hack journalist from New York whose father had emigrated from Newfoundland. Shortly after the suicide of his parents, Quoyle's unfaithful and abusive wife Petal sells their daughters to a child pornography photographer and attempts to leave the city and her husband. Petal and her lover are soon thereafter found dead in a car accident and the children are located by police. Despite the safe return of his children, Quoyle's life is collapsing and his paternal aunt Agnis Hamm convinces him to return to life in their ancestral home of Newfoundland for a new beginning. The ancestral home is situated on Quoyle's point (see below).
Through previous work contacts, he obtains work as a car-accident reporter for the Gammy Bird, local newspaper of the town of Killick-Claw. The Gammy Bird's editor also asks him to document the shipping news, arrivals and departures from the local port, which soon grows into Quoyle's signature articles on boats of interest in the harbour.
Quoyle gradually makes friends within the community, learns about his own troubled family background, and begins a relationship with a local woman, Wavey. Quoyle's growth in confidence and emotional strength, as well as his ability to be comfortable in a loving relationship become the main focus for the book. A series of deep and disturbing secrets about his ancestors emerge in strange ways. In time, he also learns about his father having raped Agnis (his sister) in their childhood.
In her acknowledgements Proulx states, "And without the inspiration of Clifford W. Ashley's wonderful 1944 work, The Ashley Book of Knots, which I had the good fortune to find at a yard sale for a quarter, this book would have remained just a thread of an idea." Ashley's illustrations and quotes are used at chapter headings throughout the book. Some of the names in the book are taken from knots, for instance Killick hitch and coil.
| Preceded by A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain by Robert Olen Butler |
Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 1994 |
Succeeded by The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields |