When I started this blog I didn’t think I’d end up reviewing novels. While I love them, I feel very ill-equip to say anything public about them. It’s not something I’ve every done or learnt how to do. However, I’ve just finished re-reading what I’ve just reconfirmed is probably my favourite book; E. Annie Proulx’s Shipping News.
Largely it’s the atmosphere the book creates that I like so much. An atmosphere of big skies, big seas and weather that you feel to the bone and affects daily life. An atmosphere that evokes nearly lost communities at the edge of developed countries. In this case the lost community being a small fishing town in Canada’s Newfoundland. I suspect I like it so much because the sense of community the book creates is one I hanker after.
This isn’t some romantic vision of small communities on the edge though. The politics of fishing rights, oil and development are a key element of the story. These politics are there as part of the lives of the characters, they affect their interactions, actions and relationships. However, they are only part of who they are. What I think I particularly like is that the challenging issues of the rights of small communities in relation to others in the world isn’t painted as a simple black and white picture of good and bad, but as what it is, an almost insoluble set of problems with winners and losers, often within the same families.
What struck me most about rereading it this time was that my memory of this atmosphere remained largely intact, but that, apart from a two or three episodes in the book and a couple of characters, I’d nearly forgotten everything about the story. It’s rare to reread a book and be surprised, though this says almost everything about the way I read and nothing about the book itself.
The first third or so of the book doesn’t start so well in terms of atmosphere and the first time I read it I nearly put it down. None of the initial characters, including the main one Quoyle, are at all sympathetic. But the arc of Quoyle’s story is also beguiling; from hapless , self-aware useless husband and man, to quiet love and a solid place in a web of relationships.
Quoyle: "... a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may walked on if necessary." Quoted in Shipping News, from The Ashley Book of Knots
As I was thinking about whether to write this review one word kept coming to mind; ‘taut’. The writing is taut, the atmosphere taut and the story taut with possibility and disaster just around the corner. But in actual fact, beyond the most detestable character in the book, Quoyle’s wife Petal, disaster is absent. Or if not absent, at least happens to off the page to individuals we don’t meet in this particular story. An a number of times disaster averted is the start of a change that ends up being positive for all concerned.
So, as I come to the end of my first novel review, what do I find? Apologies if you’ve got this far and were expecting more about the book. I’ve given away a lot of information about myself and very little about the book. That’s probably about right for an online diary, but not much use as a book review.
Photo Credit: dchurbuck
Leave a Reply