the shipping news by annie proulx summary

In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents).Īs the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph-in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs Diddy Shovel the strongman drowned Herald Prowse cane-twirling Beety Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize the much-zippered Alvin Yark silent Wavey and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets.īy the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover's knot. Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above 70 degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it's easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. Here, on desolate Quoyle's Point, in a house empty except for a few mementos of the family's unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives. The Shipping News Book by Annie Proulx Official Publisher Page Simon & Schuster Skip to Main Content Sign up and get a free ebook Don't miss our ebook deals starting at 0. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a 'head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair.features as bunched as kissed fingertips,' is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts.Īn aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. The Shipping News by Annie Proulx - Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is a vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait. Annie Proulx, would only grant the movie rights.

Winner of the Pulitzer 1994 Prize and the National Book Award Julianne Moore, Kevin Spacey, and Cate Blanchett in The Shipping News (2001).

The shipping news by annie proulx summary