The Shipping News

Annie Proulx’s highly acclaimed, international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

Quoyle is a hapless, hopeless hack journalist living and working in New York. When his no-good wife is killed in a spectacular road accident, Quoyle heads for the land of his forefathers – the remotest corner of far-flung Newfoundland. With ‘the aunt’ and his delinquent daughters – Bunny and Sunshine – in tow, Quoyle finds himself part of an unfolding, exhilarating Atlantic drama. ‘The Shipping News’ is an irresistible comedy of human life and possibility.

Reviews

Praise for The Shipping News:

‘A very impressive achievement. So funny, so full of delights’ Guardian

‘Extraordinary descriptions of place, established her original voice … [Proulx’s] prose is full of salty, strange beauty. She is a grand, inimitable writer’ Observer

‘Proulx excels at portraying the huge struggles and small hopes of ordinary people … I’ve probably reread The Shipping News more times than any other book’ Lissa Evans, author of Old Baggage, in The Times

‘As stark and ruggedly beautiful as the coast of Newfoundland itself’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Nostalgic in the best sense …The Shipping News is a fierce elegy for a world of weatherbeaten fishermen and cold winters … composed in a fine and singular key’ Independent

‘Vigorous, quirky … Throughout The Shipping News, the sinuousness of E. Annie Proulx's prose seems to correspond physically with the textures of the weather and sea’ New York Times

‘A reminder that uprooting one’s life is not only for the young and starry-eyed … Maybe it can be a more timid journey, the act of finding and accepting one’s small craggy nest among the grimness’ C Pam Zhang, author of Land of Milk and Honey

‘A splendid novel of family, journalism and cold weather … Proulx is possibly my favourite living American writer: a poet of the hardscrabble, a storyteller of the ordinary, touched with just a hint of something more mystical and wondrous’ Stig Abell, author of A Twist in the River

About the author

Annie Proulx published her first novel ‘Postcards’ in 1991 at the age of 56. ‘The Shipping News’ won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, the National Book Award and the Irish Times International Prize. Her third novel, ‘Accordion Crimes’, was published in 1996. She is also the author of three short-story collections, ‘Heart Songs’ (1994), ‘Close Range’ (1999) and ‘Bad Dirt’ (2004). ‘Brokeback Mountain’ was made into an Oscar-winning film in 2005. ‘Fine Just the Way It Is’, her third collection of Wyoming short stories, was published in 2008.