The Shipping News

Summary

Quoyle, a hapless newspaperman from upstate New York, retreats with his two daughters and a difficult aunt to his ancestral coast in Newfoundland after a series of personal disasters. As he files copy for the local paper and slowly absorbs the rhythms of weather, family lore, and harbor talk, a shape of belonging begins to emerge. Proulx's clipped, idiosyncratic prose and saturated sense of place give the novel its distinctive grain.