Reviewed by Monique Prince, Undergraduate Services Librarian
The Shipping News, winner of the 1993 National Book Award for Fiction and the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is truly a literary masterpiece. At its center is Quoyle, an awkward, lonely newspaperman who takes his two daughters to his ancestral home in a small town on the Newfoundland coast to start a job at the Gammy Bird, the local newspaper. While writing about car wrecks, the shipping news (records of what ships come and go), and shipwrecks, Quoyle learns about his family's history and develops friendships with the other newspapermen and townspeople. Significantly, it is in this cold, remote fishing village where Quoyle finally experiences a new life which forces him to face his past, his fears, and his insecurities and look to a more promising future.
