SOURCE: St. Andrews, B. A. Review of The Shipping News, by E. Annie Proulx. World Literature Today 69, no. 2 (spring 1995): 363–64.

In the following positive review, St. Andrews evaluates the strengths of The Shipping News.

Lovers of language have awaited The Shipping News with an excitement comparable to that greeting each serialized installment of a Dickens novel making slow passage across the Atlantic. That is because of Annie Proulx's writing: uncompromising, uncommon, unrelenting, unassailably precise. The expectations established by Proulx's first novel, Postcards, and her short-story collection Heart Songs and Other Stories have been satisfied amply by this triumphant second novel.

It is language, after all, which triumphs in Proulx's book. First, its postmodern episodic hero Quoyle is himself a writer; we follow this peculiar pilgrim's progress with growing interest and increasing affection. Second, the book's language is alive. Its syllables urge and slice and spin the reader like a...