The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx

Had I read this book when my mum suggested it to me a dozen years ago, I would have probably understood my classmates from Newfoundland a lot better… I always thought this was going to be a nice read but little more. Man was I wrong…

There are new layers to Quoyle’s personality and new hidden aspects of his family history in every chapter (and I do realize that this sounds like a trite comment given by a mediocre reader to an average book, but I swear it isn’t the case – at least for the latter part of the statement). The blatant disrespect for the English grammar of most of the novel’s characters (even the journalists) makes their dialogues realistic and, for want of a better term, absolutely sea-worthy (although the “yarrs” made me think of The Simpsons a bit too much…). And the anecdotes disseminated throughout the book are of the kind that can only be told in the wildest parts of Canada.

However, knowing that Julianne Moore portrayed Wavey in the movie taken from the book (which I haven’t seen yet, and probably will not in all honesty) I had her incredible freckled face in my mind all the time, and I just couldn’t understand why Quoyle wouldn’t fall in love with her sooner…

To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway at his drunk and macho finest. And I mean it as a compliment. Yes, quite a lot of his writing is now dated, but there is nothing wrong with enjoying a read from another era, despite the fact that – like pretty much every remotely sensible person – I have serious doubts about Hemingway’s character.

This is probably the most political Hemingway novel that I’ve ever read (after all he was writing it during his period as a “fucking tourist” in the Spanish Civil War – I am again quoting the comments of a commander of the International Brigades during a Q&A session after a lecture at my school). The reader likes Harry Morgan and doesn’t want him to necessarily succeed, but at least s/he wants him to keep on finding ways to get by.

And while maybe excessively blatant, the metaphor of the rich American destroying Harry’s equipment and then running away without paying is really quite powerful (and sadly painful).

The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway

The book which gave Hemingway his Nobel and for which most people nowadays seem to remember him (sigh!). I am afraid that’s because it’s really a rather easy book, in particular if compared to pretty much all his other works.

Yes, one is bound to empathize with Santiago and with his struggle, but isn’t this metaphor of life just a bit overdone? The perennial fight between man and nature, with man on the losing end but still hoping, is just not particularly attractive to me. The images of the bloody battle between the fisherman and the fish (and later the sharks) are a reflection of the macho Hemingway that I am not particularly fond of. But at least the book is set in romantic Cuba, although if that’s the greatest compliment I can find for a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize (while I can find plenty of praise for a book trashed by critics like Across the River and into the Trees) maybe there is something wrong with me…