Despite boasting a Pulitzer Prize and a big-name Hollywood adaptation, Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News is an unhurried and unconventional novel, a simple story which nonetheless requires a fair amount of thought to get the best out of. It follows the life of a man referred to only as Quoyle, one of life’s permanent losers, burdened with crippling self doubt and never quite able to succeed at anything he does. When his painful marriage comes to a harrowing end, he takes his daughters and joins his aunt in returning to the home of his ancestors in the wilderness of Newfoundland, where he tries to start his life over again.
