Annie Proulx's The Shipping News is just one of an impressive slew of novels set in Canada, including many mysteries and novels-with-a-mystery-edge. Two of the best from recent years are Stef Penney's The Tenderness of Wolves and Giles Blunt's Forty Words for Sorrow. These novels combine so many great elements: cold, snow, danger, endurance, mystery. Just that string of words alone is great. I could open a novel whose entire contents was
cold
snow
danger
endurance
mystery
and I'd enjoy it.
The Shipping News encompasses many of these elements and (slight spoiler alert) one of my favorite themes as well: the struggle of someone who is deeply, deeply steeped in sorrow and the possibility of emergence into happiness.
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