The Shipping News

This warm novel from 1993 became an international bestseller and won many prizes. It was AP’s second novel after her successful, prizewinning debut “Post Cards”. It is about the return of the insecure, incompetent, recently-widowed but loveable giant Quoyle (Q), a third-rate journalist from the state of New York, to Canada’s Newfoundland with his daughters Sunshine and Bunny (4 and 6) and his elderly but energetic aunt Agnis. They find the ancestral house where Agnis was born in a salvageable shape, despite 50+ years of total neglect.
Thanks to a former colleague, Q joins the local newspaper, which has a bizarre staff, such as the shipwrecked Englishman Nutbeem, in charge of foreign affairs and sex crimes. The paper also has plenty of (fake) ads and a faithful following of 17.000 subscribers. Aunt Agnis re-starts her old trade as furniture upholsterer. With Q’s insurance money from his wayward wife Petal’s fatal car crash, the quartet embarks on a new life. They slowly and surely integrate into this weird, cold and coastal fishing area. When Q hears at the age of 36 for the first time someone say he has done something well, he quickly overcomes other blockages, like boating on open sea (he cannot swim), do roof work, clean out codfish.
This book excels in terms of local history, -hardship, -versatility, and opinions about the weather and government policy about its fishing quotas and regional investment policy. Annie Proulx’s stories and novels are situated in hardship communities in Newfoundland, Wyoming, New England. Her plotting skills, sense of humor and drama in 39 chapters in this novel are a feast for readers. But her eye for detail make her work challenging for all but the very best translators.

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Een grijs stadje ver van de bewoonde wereld is nou niet echt een setting waar je een boek over leest. Ik vond het boek wel mooi, maar vooral omdat de film erbij ook een aanrader is (met een rol voor Kevin Spacey). De hoofdpersoon Quoyle sprak me vooral aan, want hij is eerst een stille man die zijn vrouw vreemd laat gaan en niet voor zichzelf durft op te komen. Hij heeft ook niet een geweldige baan, maar naarmate het verhaal vordert, verandert dit en wordt Quoyle een zelfstandige, ambitieuze man. Die verandering die je als lezer meebeleeft is interessant.

Geschreven bij The Shipping News

boeiend, goed geschreven