The Shipping News
Annie Proulx
Having read it
★★★☆☆
A good read but a little too long and one that didn’t feel too tied to a plot, more the life and times of its setting and characters; probably a modern classic and full of observant and decent parts but not necessarily a page-turner, so a middle of the road rating from me.
A good passage
Quoyle sat through meetings scribbling on pads. It seemed he was part of something. Edna’s roars, Partridge’s picking did not hurt him. He had come up under the savage brother, the father’s relentless criticism. Thrilled at the sight of his byline. Irregular hours encouraged him to imagine that he was master of his own time. Home after midnight from a debate on the wording of a minor municipal bylaw on bottle recycling, he felt he was a pin in the hinge of power. Saw the commonplaces of life as newspaper headlines. Man Walks Across Parking Lot at Moderate Pace. Women Talk of Rain. Phone Rings in Empty Room.
A second good passage
Warren [the dog] made bursting noises under the bed. A rancorous stench. Dog Farts Fell Family of Four.
A third good passage
A pendulum clock brought from the equator to a northern country will run fast. Arctic rivers cut deepest into their right banks, and hunters lost in the north woods unconsciously veer to the right as the earth turns beneath their feet. And in the north the dangerous storms from the west often begin with an east wind. All of these things are related to the Coriolis, the reeling gyroscopic effect of the earth’s spin that creates wind and flow of weather, the countering backwashes and eddies of
storms.