The Shipping News

by Annie Proulx
(1993 | 337 p)

Quoyle: A coil of rope

It took nearly 5 chapters of dogged reading before I realized what a gem of a book I'd found in The Shipping News. The storytelling is subtle while the writing is close-knit. Each sentence paints a tiny picture of Quoyle's metamorphosis.

Quoyle is delivered to us as a man with a "great damp loaf of a body" and a "giant's chin." These descriptions become characters unto themselves, tormenting and comforting Quoyle in turns. His hapless forays into life have not been kind but he's more resigned than bitter. He never expected much else. A disastrous marriage, his parents' deaths, and suddenly Quoyle is cut free, alone, the single father of two girls. His options being nonexistent he decides to join his Aunt in a trek to the forgotten family place in Newfoundland where he takes a job writing the Shipping News for a small town newspaper. Things begin to change.

My first reaction when I finished this book was "I'm in love! How am I this late to the Annie Proulx party?" The feeling still hasn't worn off. I must, must read everything she's ever written immediately. Or shortly thereafter.

The Color Purple

by Alice Walker
p 290

Rarely a book and movie coincide so deeply that they become one, but in the case of Alice Walker's "The Color Purple" I cannot separate the two. Having seen the movie first, I naturally gravitated to the movie characters when I first picked up the book. The casting seemed too perfect not to seamlessly input their faces onto the written page. Yet with all good literature, only Walker's beautiful and at times poetic words can bring them to life.
As a Book Club choice, I was not sure I was ready to re-read this book - mostly because I had just read it in the last few years. Yet with each reading or watching of the movie, I glean a little more from the characters and the heartbreak and joy they experience. The relationship between Shug, Celie and Mister is at the core of this story, and with this reading I found myself focusing on how their love for each other somehow overcomes all the hurt and pain they brought to one another.
This redemptive quality resonated throughout the book. The story deals with the difficulties of black Americans in the 1930's, particularly black women. Celie's story is written in letter form first to God, then to her sister Nettie. This personal approach gives her the opportunity
to try to explain, if not make sense of her world. She is an uneducated, poor, abused black woman in the south, yet Walker creates within her letters a full and glorious story of hope.
This book is easily one of my all -time favorites. If you haven't picked it up, do it - then watch the movie.
Rock, Chalk, Jay, Hawk x 100!!!!

Beloved

by Toni Morrison, 275 pages

Almost 20 years after the end of the Civil War and Emancipation, former slaves are struggling to survive.  Sethe and her daughter, Denver, are isolated from the black community and left alone to deal with brutal memories and ghosts of the past.  Paul D., another former slave from Sethe's past returns, and his arrival is soon followed by that of a stranger who seems at once alien and familiar.  These newcomers revive a past that Sethe has fought to keep buried for twenty years.  "Beloved" won both the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the Nobel Prize in Literature.

This book is incredibly powerful and very hard to read.  Morrison brings slavery and a post-war Ohio painfully to life.  About twenty pages in, I wasn't sure I was going to make it, but the story sucked me in.  Just when I was sure I couldn't take any more, Morrison would throw in a moment of love or kindness that was all the more meaningful for the awful reality in which the characters live.  A great read, but you'll need a strong constitution to make it through!

Long Day's Journey into Night

by Eugene O'Neill, 179 pages

The Tyrones are a family ravaged by addiction.  The family is filled with denial, alienation, recriminations, and an odd camaraderie that comes from being bound by blood.  This play recounts a day that is both typical and remarkable in the course of their lives.  "Long Day's Journey into Night" won the Pulitzer Prize in 1957.

I was warned before reading this (as I was with another of O'Neill's plays, "Moon for the Misbegotten") that I would probably be depressed by it.  Maybe I just need to be contrary, but I didn't have that reaction at all.  Yes, the characters are dark and haunted, and there's no happy ending, but I thought this was a brilliant portrayal of the cycle of addiction in families.  The Tyrones carefully balance the line between love and hate in their family dynamics, never quite falling over the edge despite all provocation.  Each character is a picture of wasted potential and thwarted dreams, but they still spark with intelligence and poetry despite their lowered circumstances.  This is beautifully written and remains relevant in today's society.

The Age of Innocence

by Edith Wharton, 217 pages 

In New York's Gilded Age, society reigns supreme, and Newland Archer thinks this is how it should be.  He is engaged to the lovely May Welland, has an undemanding job at a law office, and enjoys the conventions of the world in which he lives.  All these comforts are challenged with the arrival of his fiance's scandalous cousin, Countess Ellen Olenska.  In his attempts to keep his civilized world free of scandal, he draws closer to the intriguing Ellen and begins to dream of a different life, one not allowed by society.  This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.

"The Age of Innocence" is a compelling story of a man torn between desire and responsibility.  Wharton's New York backdrop is richly detailed, and her dialog is layered with subtext of a world that doesn't speak about the things that matter.  For me, this book was poignant and thoughtful and maybe a little depressing, but I still really enjoyed it.  I recommend this to anyone interested in history or social issues.