Why this book: Selected by my literature reading group – several had already read it and wanted to read it again.  It is one of a handful of novels that won the American Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize in the same year. the Pulitzer Prize.

Summary in 3 Sentences: It begins with a 36 year old man living in NY whose life is a mess – he is unfulfilled and unsuccessful at work, his wife with whom he is completely infatuated, disrespects him and is carousing with other men, and he has no prospects.  When his wife is killed in a car accident, he is devastated but his aunt insists he packs up his 2 children and accompany her to Newfoundland where their ancestors were from. In Newfoundland he slowly begins to make a life for himself, as he finds his footing and integrates with the eccentrics in the small town where they live.

My Impressions: Interesting, different, and the story a bit quirky.   The writing is idiosyncratic – interesting, not hard to follow, just creative and different. 

The “story” is about Quoyle – something of a ne’er do well – not a bad or evil guy, but someone who clearly has “issues,” his life is a mess, he lacks self confidence and one might say he is emotionally unstable.    And then he moves to Newfoundland Canada to try to start over.  His life after he arrives in Newfoundland is the heart of the story.

We meet Quoyle in NYC where he is in his mid 20s, and we learn that his father berated and belittled him as a child and his parents fulfilled a suicide pact.  No wonder he was screwed up! In his “nowhere man” life, he meets and falls madly in love with Petal,  apparently the first woman who has ever paid any attention to him. Petal turns out to be a very self-centered, narcissistic,  manipulative, unstable sex addict, and Quoyle is smitten by her attention and eroticism.  He asks her to marry him, which she does – clearly as a free meal ticket for herself with no intention of truly becoming “married.”   We get glimpses of their lives over the next few years – she has two daughters (we assume by Quoyle, but we don’t know,) , while she still aggressively plays the field with many lovers, bringing some home, which Quoyle knows and accepts – he doesn’t have the self confidence to confront or challenge her. 

She apparently pushes all the child rearing and housekeeping chores onto Quoyle, which he passively accepts as the cost of keeping her in his life.  We don’t get much of a glimpse into this very dysfunctional family until Petal is killed in a car accident while taking off with one of her lovers, after selling their children to a black market (probably sex-trafficking) adoption agency for $6K. That was the back drop for the rest of the story.

This is where the story of The Shipping News truly begins.  Quoyle is broken hearted and emotionally distraught when he learned of Petal’s death, (while I and other readers are thinking “good riddance!”) and now he doesn’t know what to do. In steps his Aunt, who suggests that he accompany her to Newfoundland and start over where their family had lived for generations before emigrating to America.  They travel to Newfoundland and it is the Aunt’s intent to move into and renovate the old Quoyle home that had been abandoned out on the coast for nearly 40 years.  Quoyle finds work in a dysfunctional local newspaper (the local rag) which highlights scandal, car wrecks, sexual assaults and other salacious news –  whatever will grab the attention of the local boreed, blue-collar audience.

Over the rest of the story, Quoyle slowly integrates himself into this backwater community, makes friends and finds a way to fit in, which he never had before. His Aunt pursues her own life, finding work upholstering yachts and ships, while the two daughters get into school.  In this process, Quoyle learns about the small community, some of its darker secrets and also some darker secrets of his own families past. He meets and befriends a  young woman who is a widow with a disabled child and the two seeming outcasts trying to raise children alone find common ground helping and supporting each other. Their friendship begins to blossom as Quoyle slowly finds some success in his efforts to integrate and create a life for himself.  Eventually he and his Aunt have to  confront some of the darker secrets of the Quoyle family history, which the older people in the community know, but he and his Aunt didn’t.  

What appealed to me in this book is that there are no heroes – regular people, living an isolated, rather unexciting life in a small remote town in Newfoundland.  We see how people can become rather eccentric – even unstable –  living in a small bubble like that.  Those living there accept as normal what might drive me crazy – but they learn to live together and take care of each other in their own way. And we see how alcohol becomes a primary source of entertainment and a social lubricant – often to the detriment of the community.

This was an interesting and good book – different –  but not a great book from my perspective.  It provides interesting insights into life today in a remote coastal village in Newfoundland, and perspectives on people who have ended up there, or chosen to live there.  

My wife and I watched the movie which we thought was an excellent adaptation of the book – staring Kevin Spacey as Quoyle, Judy Dench as the Aunt, and Julianne Moore as the woman freind and eventual love interest. I’d say the book and the movie complement each other – I recommend both together.