Very rarely do I change a rating on a book once I have set it, but in this case, how can I not. Trust me, this story is worthy of every one of those five stars. Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.” Discuss Quoyle's relationship with Petal Bear. Can you justify his feelings for her? Even after her death, she continues to have a strong hold on him, and her memory threatens to squelch the potential of his feeling for Wavey Prowse. Is this because Quoyle doesn't understand love without pain? Both Quoyle and Wavey have experienced abusive relationships previously. How do they treat each other? But I know knots. A knot at the base of my throat, an edgy knot taking over my stomach, a knot where my colon used to be. By the way it's built, Quoyle is reminiscent of prince Mishkin - " good " in the most essential sense of the word, foreign to any pettiness. Just that Dostoïevski's " idiot" had, unlike Quoyle - a less struggling past.

Punch sighed, feigned a weighty decision. "Put you on the municipal beat to help out Al Catalog. He'll break you in. Get your assignments from him." Knots are the most obvious one. Each chapter opens with a quotation pertinent to what it contains, and many are from Ashley Book of Knots, which Proulx found second-hand, and gave her the inspiration and structure she sought. Knots feature in the plot metaphorically (in terms of being bound or adrift), in a more literal and superstitious sense. Rope can be wound and knotted to make good a wound or separation. We also learn that Quoyle's name means "coil of rope", and I suppose he is pretty tightly coiled for the first half of the book.On the horizon icebergs like white prisons. The immense blue fabric of the sea, rumpled and creased." The book is riddled with pain, rejection, estrangement and mentions of abusive relationships (never graphic); many are haunted by ghosts of past events and relationships gone wrong. But although it is sometimes bleak, it is rarely depressing, and sometimes it's funny. Even close and fond relationships often have an element of awkwardness and distance; for instance, Quoyle always refers to "the aunt", rather than "my aunt". Even after living with her for a while, "It came to him he knew nearly nothing of the aunt's life. And hadn't missed the knowledge." The writing is very different and interesting. While they are in their small town in New York, the sentences are terse, choppy – very few articles and no conjunctions. Tight, compressed sentences that reflected their tight, compressed existence. During this time, Quoyle has noticed a tall, graceful woman in town, Wavey Prowse, whose child, Herry, has Down's Syndrome. Wavey initially draws Quoyle's attention because of the way she walks and carries herself; they have a mutual fondness for each other. One day, they seem to come close to physical intimacy, but Wavey, reminded of her dead husband, runs away. Quoyle has an epiphany, feeling renewed and sure of his place amidst the great vastness of sea, earth, and time. It might be that some shade of humour and likability may edge it’s way between the covers after the man starts the job after which the book is named. I am just not sure it is worth the slog as so far the only enjoyable part of the book has been the knot work quotes at the start of each chapter.

Everyone is worthy, not all heroes are tall, dark, handsome, beautiful, sexy, confident or comfortable in their own skin. Quoyle's own eyes roved to a water-stained engraving on the wall. He saw a grainy face, eyes like glass eggs, a fringe of hairs rising from under the collar and cascading over its starched rim. Was it Punch's grandfather in the chipped frame? He wondered about ancestors.Quoyle, a thirty-six year old newspaper reporter from New York state, decides to move to Newfoundland to escape his emotionally traumatic life. His parents, who never cared for him much to begin with, have committed suicide, and his cruel, two-timing wife, Petal has died in a car accident on the way to Florida with another man. Quoyle is finally convinced by his aunt to move to Newfoundland in search of a new life. The aunt has always wanted to return to the home of her ancestry, and she and Quoyle and his daughters move together.

It is the kind of novel that wins prizes, because it is healing book, the past here is full of horror but in the present all those horrors are firmly confronted, resolved, stitched up, frayed ends knotted, no loose ends left and the future the author assures us can be happy irrespective of sexuality, personal needs or even the economy. I think one weakness is that the mother of the girls is too horrible, and the manner of her departure from their lives stretched my credulity somewhat. Newfoundland is more than the setting for this story, it is a dreary yet engaging character onto itself. Does the cold weather and the rough life add to your enjoyment of the book?a few torn pieces of early morning cloud the shape and color of salmon fillets" (I think I'd prefer that one without the fish) This book is revolutionary in it's use of language. She punctuates inventively and her punctuation "style" gives her sentences a strange movement. The book moves, it actually moves, as you read it. Each chapter is preceded by a small quote from Ashley's " Book of Knots" , which aims at the meaning of the chapter.

This was one of the first twenty books I added to my to-read shelf here on Goodreads nearly eight years ago. Along the way, I somehow acquired not just one but two copies of this Pulitzer prize winning novel. Either my memory of what I own failed me, or I really wanted to read this. In any case, it was high time I grabbed one of those copies from my bookshelf! Besides, it’s so well loved, I was sure to be wild about it as well. I’m sorry to say that something went wrong here, friends. While I did respect Proulx’s work, I’m not able to write a gushing review of it! I’m kind of stumped to explain exactly what happened. Proulx tells us the aunt is a lesbian, yet never makes a specific issue out of the aunt's sexual orientation. Does this fact add dimension to the story for you? Does it add to the aunt's character? We, as readers, assume that characters are heterosexual without needing to hear specifically about their sexual life. Does the matter-of-course way Proulx treats the aunt's sexuality help make the reader a less judgmental critic?

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This is my first Proulx, so I didn't know if the unusual writing style is typical, or specially chosen for this particular story. I hope it's the latter, as it works very well. parenthesis around her mouth set like clamps. Impossible to know if she was listening to Nutbeem or flying over the Himalayas"