The Shipping News   by Annie Proulx

Mid March, 2006     A Christmas gift from my loving, book-addict Mother.

Interesting book. IT's a novel, set (mostly,) in Eastern Canada. It's about a more or less worthless, social outcast man, who moves there, and gets his life together and meaningful. It was very funny, thinking about it in the light of something that Ian and Will Furgusun wrote, (in How to Be a Canadian.) They described the Contemporary Canadian Novel... which this book matches, to some degree, in every way. The most interesting fit, was the way that the two main characters, (or three, or four, or all of them,) are victims. But, Empowered victims. (Does that seem like an oxymoron? Yes.) But, that's what they are. They've been victimized... and that stays with them, but they're strong, and resilient somehow as well. The only trick to this book is, that it's written by an American, not a Canadian.

What do I say now though? The characters are all believable, (even if they are empowered victims,) and it was pleasing to read about them, and see the development of ideas and feelings in them. I treasured the atmosphere of the little east coast fishing village. I've never been that far out east, but the culture of it still resonates within me. For me, (with all my thoughts about eventually starting a family,) the characterization of the father and his two young daughters, -and the interrelations between them, were some of the strongest elements. I feel that the author must have some children herself, because the two daughter's personalities are so Alive, and vital; The description of the four year old going up to her father and whispering with barely contained excitement, that there's going to be a Surprise for him, was absolutely perfect.

What else? It's not all a happy book, and it includes all the possible bad sides of it's characters, locations, and temporal setting. But it still has a happy end to it. Is that a fairly recent practice in books though? Within the past ten or fifteen years I mean: To include all the drug dealers, alcoholics, child abusers, and masses of unemployed in every story?

Well, not a bad story at all. And now... I'm greatly looking forward to seeing the film Brokeback Mountain which she apparently wrote the original story of.