The Shipping News

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, The Shipping News is a vigorous, darkly comic, at times magical portrait of the contemporary North American family, and "a rare creation, a lyric page-turner" (Chicago Tribune). At thirty-six, Quoyle, a third-rate newspaperman is wrenched violently out of his world when his two-timing wife meets her just desserts. 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. The Shipping News "is charged with sardonic wit-alive, funny, a little threatening: packed with brilliantly original images...and now and then, a sentence that simply takes your breath away" (USA TODAY).