Book: The Shipping News

Author: Annie Proulx

Review: This was a good book.  Quoyle is the unlikely main character of the book.  He is an overweight loser, whose wife is sleeping around on him to the point that she is not even living in their trailer anymore.  He does his best to take care of their two young daughters, who his wife, Petal, sometimes claims to have forgotten completely.  When his wife dies, he is still completely crushed.  His Aunt convinces him to get a new start with her, by moving to their homeland of Newfoundland.  It sounds like a lousy place to live to me.  There ancesteral home is still standing on the rock that it was dragged and bolted to.  Quoyle gets a job writing the shipping news for the local paper.  They meet all kinds of great characters in the slowly dying town, and a family secret is revealed as well.  Quoyles daughter, Bunny, is stuggling with understanding death, and is more confused than ever, when their friend wakes up during his own funeral.