As the Man Booker Prize-winning Life of Pi episode illustrates, I’m always wary of critically acclaimed books, which means my trepidation, like the country’s current threat levels, was set to ‘severe’ prior to tackling The Shipping News.It’s there on the cover - winner of The Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, The Irish Times International Prize and The National Book Award. It comes highly regarded, to say the least.
I must admit that, like the Newfoundland weather, it took a while for me to warm to the book. Its pared-down prose, with short sentences that sometimes even omit verbs, took some getting used to. Its characters were generally, at first, unlikeable. And the story of a useless man-cum-journalist and his battle to find something of worth in his life was far from engaging.
But I kept turning the pages, I wanted to read more. The reader learns something new, or is given a clue to a secret, every couple of pages and this certainly keeps things interesting, as does the introduction of a completely new set of characters - most of whom are genuinely odd - when Quoyle (the afore-mentioned journalist) gets to Newfoundland. Their life histories are also cleverly drip-fed in stages.
Having started pitying Quoyle, he earns the reader’s respect as well as the respect of others with his successful shipping news column in a local paper and, ultimately, it’s such a heart-warming story that it’s no surprise a film adaptation followed.
So, rating time:
#19 The Shipping News, by Annie Proulx (Fourth Estate) - 7/10
Next up: Eclipse, by Stephanie Meyer (Atom)
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