The Shipping News: A Novel By E. Annie Proulx
A Pulitzer Prize winning novel set On Newfoundland
Originally Posted at “Old Ones Dream” September 11, 2013.
All of you that have followed this blog know of my love for Newfoundland - for the place and most of all for the inhabitants. Imagine my rapture when I discovered that the novel by Annie Proulx that I was reading, after the first 25 pages set in New York, takes the leading characters back home to The Rock. From that point on Proulx’s work is permeated with place, people and patois.
I had been looking around for a novel by Proulx after reading her short story in The New Yorker Summer Fiction Issue. At the public library I decided against her several volumes of Wyoming stories and chose The Shipping News because I was aware that it was an earlier award winning work. The book jacket announces it the winner of the U. S. National Book Award. That edition was apparently printed before it won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The book is worthy. I am in awe.
“And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery” - E. Annie Proulx
Also, I’ve read some other things by her and the book, ‘Accordion Crimes’ stands out in my mind because it is so cleverly written.
Tom, I read ‘The Shipping News’ a long time ago and it’s a great book. I seem to recall that it was mainly set in Maine but it may have involved Newfoundland. I enjoyed it but have forgotten many details, so, I probably need to go back and read it again.