I'll call this an "environmental novel" of Newfoundland. They are overweight or pock-marked or not quite attractive, in that left-behind kind of way, and they are all damaged in some way, usually by the loss of loved ones to nature.īut the characters are small specks against the giant backdrop of rock, sea and storms. The plot revolves around ordinary characters - ordinary, quirky Newfies, that is. Everyone in the present is haunted in some way by the victims in the past claimed by nature, usually by the sea. I didn't realize until it was too late how hard I had fallen for this lot.Ī love story of a single father, a newspaper reporter, who returns to Newfoundland to live in an ancestral home and meets a local woman.
And he finds it in himself, not in the circumstances around him. This dying place brings him to life, and eventually, for the first time in his life, he finds joy and peace. The scene near the end in which Quoyle prepares to attend the wake for one of his close friends, looks at his gigantic naked body in the mirror, and feels a surge of joy to be such an honest and satisfying moment of redemption. And in the midst of it he finds friendship, love, and his own self-worth. He watches people fall on hard times and move away, endures monotony, deep cold, harsh storms and odd, forced relationships. Instead, the story of a middle-aged man who hates himself even more than he hates his circumstance, moving back to his modest roots, finding a lot of darkness in the places he comes from.
No beautiful starry-eyed twentysomething trotting off to exotic locations or big cities here. Its sort of the anti-coming of age story. I found this to be poetic and strangely uplifting. Quoyle finds redemption from a place that itself is bleak, full of hardship, and dying. Wanted to eat flipper pie with him and the girls. Before you know it, their presence is comforting. The thing of it is, they start to feel so honest. Instead, Proulx builds her momentum slowly, slowly, taking you deeper into the lives of these characters, who started out so hard, unattractive, broken, and nasty. No secret codes to be found in paintings. There was no melodramatic conflict introduced. Then at some point in the second half, the book went from a nice little read to a ferocious page-turner, and I still am not sure how it became so compelling. In the beginning it felt a little forced. And his wife Petal is a two-dimensional device created solely as a catalyst for the story to come. Quoyle, a big, damp loaf of a man, as Proulx describes him, is the definition of pathetic. I found the book initially to be a relaxing solace on my commute home after a busy day of work, soley because of its use of language and setting. Proulx's writing style is mesmerizing, almost hypnotic.
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