A darkly comic portrait of human life and possibility. Quoyle is a hopeless hack journalist working in New York. When his two-timing wife dies in a road accident, he retreats to his ancestral home on the coast of Newfoundland where he must confront the unpredictable forces of nature and society.

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The winner of both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, The Shipping News is a stunning, big-hearted novel that beautifully blends pulse-thumping romance, fishing lore, and wildly eccentric

characters.

Meet Quoyle, a timid New York newspaperman whose two-timing wife has finally disappeared for good. Devastated, he retreats to his ancestral home on the starkly beautiful coast of Newfoundland, where he hopes to cobble up a new life.

Quoyle's pain is as harsh and enduring as the Atlantic winter storms. But with the help of a colorful collection of local characters including drowned Herald, cane-twirling Beety, and silent Wavey. he begins to see that love can exist without pain and misery. By the time spring arrives, Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover's knot.

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By turns richly comic and broodingly dark, The Shipping News showcases the many reasons why critics hail E. Annie Proulx as one of America's most gifted and original storytellers.