Finished: The Shipping News (Proulx) Pulitzer Prize winner filled with beautiful imagery and prose and with a few characters to care about, but this little slice of life in Newfoundland was just a bit too boring for me to read more than a bit a day, and that's not how I like to read. The story centers on a man named Quoyle. He's a father of two young girls who has lost his wife, who was a cheating witch who belittled him at every turn. She finally, one day, accidentally drove over a cliff with her latest lover and died. Quoyle's aunt from his father's side of the family shows up and talks him into moving himself and the girls to Newfoundland to where their family "came from". Quoyle is a large, unattractive, self-conscious, introverted man, who was emotionally and physically abused as a child by both his father and his brother. With no family left, he decides to go with his aunt to the frozen tundra and extremely small-town fishing life of Newfoundland. Quoyle goes to work for the small town newspaper, put in charge of writing the comings and goings of the ships that sail into their harbor, i.e., the shipping news. He's also put in charge of writing about any and all car accidents that happen in the town. His little daughters are still pretty traumatized by their mother's death, but they begin to feel at home there and make good friends with the children of Quoyle's boss's son's family. Quoyle also meets a young woman named Wavey who is a fishing widow, having lost her husband to the merciless northern waters as many wives of the town did. She's the mother of a young boy with Downs Syndrome and they all grow very close. By the end of the story, Quoyle and Wavey have finally come together in a nice kind of love and decided it's time to put their deceased spouses behind them and start a life together. Quoyle, Wavey, the aunt, and the other characters are quirky, but there for each other through northern winter storms, hard times and even death. This wasn't my favorite book in the world, but I'm glad I finally finished it and glad I read it.