The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Another book repeatedly pushed to the "later" part of my reading shelves.  Now I can finally rent the movie.  Dismal, foggy, frozen Newfoundland.  Quoyle leaves a shattered marriage in New York for his Canadian homeland. A strong but secretive aunt and two very young daughters in tow.  Finally he lands a job with a small town newspaper writing a column on the shipping news.  His family home, a worn wreck of a place braced against wind and ocean tides by bolts and wires.  The newspaper office full of quirky  characters both life and weather worn.  The feeling that their harsh existence places them on the edge of a daily abyss but always they are pulled back from the edge by survival lessons honed in such a isolated environment.  Are you getting a feeling for the style?  Proulx of course does it sooooo much better. Those with a grammatical compulsion may struggle but think narrative poetry.  It was enough to convince the 1993 Pulitzer committee that this book should win the prize for fiction.