The Shipping News

Fleeing the American rat race with two disturbed daughters and an eccentric aunt, confirmed loser Quoyle heads for his ancestors' home in far-flung Newfoundland's remotest corner. In this place of cruel storms, a dying fishery and chronic unemployment, the battered members of three generations try to cobble together new lives. The aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer, Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the Gammy Bird (the local weekly paper specialising in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents). Helping Quoyle to confront life's major and minor catastrophes and triumphs are the obsequious Mavis Bangs; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognise; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; and old Billy Pretty, with his of secrets.

Beginning with a lonely man in a bleak landscape, The Shipping News transforms both as each, unforgettably, transforms the other. As Quoyle's story becomes an irresistible, inspiring comedy of human life and possibility, an exhilarating Atlantic drama unfolds all around in Newfoundland's blanketing fog and whirl- ing snow, in sunlight, spray and scudding clouds. --front flap