The Shipping News
by Annie Proulx
The Shipping News is an extraordinary book. I mean, take the plot: stupid guy marries promiscuous girl, they have a couple of kids, she dies in a car crash and he moves house – that’s it. It is a vignette of somebody’s life. But, for 350 pages she does the most extraordinary thing with language – things which break all the rules. W Somerset Maugham said there are only three rules for writing and no one ever agrees what they are. Well, she takes what rules anyone may have and breaks all of them.
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“The Shipping News is an extraordinary book. For 350 pages, she does the most extraordinary thing with language – things which break all the rules. W Somerset Maugham said there are only three rules for writing and no one ever agrees what they are. Well, she takes what rules anyone may have and breaks all of them.” Read more...
The best books on Human Dramas
R J Ellory, Novelist
