Título: The Shipping News
Autor: Annie Proulx
Sinopse: In The Shipping News E. Annie Proulx departs from the darkly fated heroes of Heart Songs and Postcards to explore the cracked-up contemporary American family. Quoyle, a third-rate newspaper hack, with a "head shaped like a crenshaw, no neck, reddish hair ... features as bunched as kissed fingertips," is wrenched violently out of his workaday life when his two-timing wife meets her just deserts. An aunt convinces Quoyle and his two emotionally disturbed daughters to return with her to the starkly beautiful coastal landscape of their ancestral home in Newfoundland. Here, on desolate Quoyle's Point, in a house empty except for a few momentoes of the family's unsavory past, the battered members of three generations try to cobble up new lives. Newfoundland is a country of coast and cove where the mercury rarely rises above 70 degrees, the local culinary delicacy is cod cheeks, and it's easier to travel by boat and snowmobile than on anything with wheels. In this harsh place of cruel storms, a collapsing fishery, and chronic unemployment, the aunt sets up as a yacht upholsterer in nearby Killick-Claw, and Quoyle finds a job reporting the shipping news for the local weekly, the Gammy Bird (a paper that specializes ... [more]in sexual-abuse stories and grisly photos of car accidents). As the long winter closes its jaws of ice, each of the Quoyles confronts private demons, reels from catastrophe to minor triumph - in the company of the obsequious Mavis Bangs; Diddy Shovel the strongman; drowned Herald Prowse; cane-twirling Beety; Nutbeem, who steals foreign news from the radio; a demented cousin the aunt refuses to recognize; the much-zippered Alvin Yark; silent Wavey; and old Billy Pretty, with his bag of secrets. By the time of the spring storms Quoyle has learned how to gut cod, to escape from a pickle jar, and to tie a true lover's knot. By turns comic and dark, The Shipping News is a celebration of the American genius for storytelling and of E. Annie Proulx's vigorous contribution to the art, and magic, of the contemporary novel.
Contexto da obra
Quando a classificação é mais ampla, o contexto do livro costuma depender ainda mais de autoria, tema e edição. “The Shipping News”, de Annie Proulx, publicado pela editora Fourth Estate, em 2009 e com 368 páginas, integra a categoria Livros Variados. Por isso, autoria, edição e tema acabam tendo ainda mais peso na forma de apresentar o livro.
Editora: Fourth Estate
Páginas: 368
Ano: 2009
Edição: 1994 paperback edition (40)
Linguagem: pt_BR
ISBN: 9781857022421
ISBN13: 9781857022421
Sobre a editora
Os livros da editora Fourth Estate costumam oferecer uma experiência de leitura que mescla rigor histórico e narrativa envolvente, com atenção a detalhes humanos e sociais pouco explorados. Muitas obras revelam personagens em contextos complexos, como a vida cotidiana na era vitoriana ou os dilemas contemporâneos de famílias e comunidades urbanas. O catálogo sugere um equilíbrio entre textos que trazem humor sutil e crítica social, e outros que exploram temas densos como luto, identidade e conflitos políticos, sempre com linguagem acessível e ritmo que varia do contemplativo ao tenso. A diversidade editorial inclui desde romances epistolares e investigações criminais até reflexões sobre alimentação e métodos organizacionais, indicando uma abertura para estilos narrativos variados, mas com foco em histórias que provocam reflexão.
