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"In The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx departs from the darkly fated heroes of Heart Songs and Postcards to explore the cracked-up contemporary American family." "Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a "head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair...features as bunched as kissed fingertips," is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle's Point, in a house empty except for a few momentoes of the family's unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives." "Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above 70 degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it's easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents)." "As the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph - in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs; Diddy Shovel the strongman; drowned Herald Prowse; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; silent Wavey; and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets. By the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover's knot." "By turns comic and dark, The Shipping News is a celebration of the American genius for storytelling and of E. Annie Proulx's vigorous contribution to the art, and magic, of the contemporary novel."--BOOK JACKET.
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Subjects
Domestic fiction, Family, Fiction, American literature, Families, National Book Award Winner, Women authors, award:national_book_award=1993, award:national_book_award=fiction, United States, English fiction, Newfoundland and Labrador -- Fiction., Livres en gros caractères, Large type books, Counselors, Supervision of, Psychotherapy, Education, POLITICAL SCIENCE, Public Policy, Social Services & Welfare, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Human Services, Supervision, Beratung, Fiction, family life, Newfoundland and labrador, fiction, Fiction, family life, general, Journalists, fictionPeople
Quoyle, Petal Bear, Bunny, Sunshine, Agnis Hamm, Wavey ProwseShowing 11 featured editions. View all 54 editions?
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The Shipping News
2008, Harper Perennial
Paperback
in English
- printing (1)
0007268327 9780007268320
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Noeuds et dénouement
March 31, 1999, Rivages
Mass Market Paperback
in French
2743604689 9782743604684
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The Shipping News
1994, Simon & Schuster
Paperback
in English
- 1st Touchstone Edition (8)
0671510053 9780671510053
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The Shipping News
1994, Simon & Schuster
Paperback
in English
- First Touchstone Edition (14)
0671510053 9780671510053
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10
The Shipping News
1993, Fourth Estate
Paperback
in English
- Special Overseas Editon
1857021681 9781857021684
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The Shipping News
1993, Charles Scribner's Sons
Paperback
in English
- printing (4)
068419337X 9780684193373
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At thirty-six, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman, is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts. He retreats with his two daughters to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful Newfoundland coast, where a rich cast of local characters all play a part in Quoyle's struggle to reclaim his life. As three generations of his family cobble up new lives, Quoyle confronts his private demons--and the unpredictable forces of nature and society--and begins to see the possibility of love without pain or misery.
A vigorous, darkly comic, and at times magical portrait of the contemporary American family, The Shipping News shows why E. Annie Proulx is recognized as one of the most gifted and original writers in America today.
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July 22, 2024 | Edited by MARC Bot | import existing book |
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