Title The Shipping News

Author E. Annie Proulx

Setting
Modern, New York (briefly) Newfoundland
Unique Features
Much of the book is written in headline-like fragments.
Characters
Quoyle main character; failure at pretty much everything; transformed after moving to
Newfoundland
Petal Bear Quoyles terrible wife who did terrible things such as selling her two daughters; she
dies in a car accident but lingers in Quoyles mind for a while (i.e. most of the book)
Quoyles aunt helps Quoyle and leads him to Newfoundland and the Quoyles old house
Jack Buggit head of The Gammy Bird who likes to fish a lot
Tert Card editor of The Gammy Bird; at one point he is involved in a conflict with Quoyle over
oil and oil tankers
Billy Pretty another Gammy Bird guy; at one point he takes Quoyle on a boating adventure
Wavey Prowse a quiet woman that Quoyle is particularly fond of; she has a son named Herry
Guy Quoyles dad who treated Quoyle poorly as a child; he committed suicide along with his
wife
Nolan A crazy guy who is related to Quoyles family; he ties knots; hes pretty crazy
Bunny One of Quoyles daughters; shes the one with the visions of the white dog
Plot Synopsis
Quoyles childhood sucked. As an adult, he worked on and off as a newspaper reporter, getting
constantly fired and rehired. He married Petal Bear and had two daughters, Bunny and Sunshine.
After Petal dies, Quoyle is brought by his aunt to Newfoundland, where the Quoyle family came
from. There, he works at The Gammy Bird, a pretty pathetic but nonetheless operational
newspaper publisher. In Newfoundland, Quoyle does things like fix up his ancestors house on
Quoyles Point, learn about boats, learned about his familys history, and discovered Wavey
Prowse. All the changes in his life help him become less of a failure by the end of the novel.
Issues
The main issue is that Quoyle has always faced problems with self-confidence and in general
making his way in the world, which was further complicated by an abusive relationship.
Themes

Self-discovery: Quoyles return to his ancestors origin and his learning about the local
environment where his family lived
Self-improvement: Quoyle learns how to fix up his broken life in Newfoundland
Significant Quotations
And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery
MOW
- It is possible for bad situations to turn out okay
- Anything is possible
- People can fail in some environments and thrive in others.
To refresh, here is the last paragraph of the book:
For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly
away, what else might be possible? Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goats
blood, mountaintops give off cold fire, forests appear in mid-ocean, it may happen that a crab is
caught with the shadow of a hand on its back, that the wind be imprisoned in a bit of knotted
string. And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.