Quoyle is a large ugly clumsy oaf leading a miserable life in nowehere, New York. Of course, he's nothing but good, and we like him. He manages two daughters with a harlot who hurts him and dies. So, it's off to the ancestral lands in Newfoundland where he discovers a new way of life and a new kind of people. He encounters newfies, boats, fish, ice, isolation: think Northern Exposure with poverty. The bizzare mingling of modern life and ancient ways makes the setting interesting.

This is a mood book, essentially another view of the modern American family and life and love. I didn't like certain style effects: in the beginning there are a lot of (too many) non-sentences. Sentences without verbs. Or: Reading sentences without a subject. Happily, Proulx gets over these about 1/3 of the way through and you're left with headlines as the only literary weirdness, and the headlines work fine. Headline Style OK By Reader.

This book won the National Book Award ('93) and the Pulitzer Prize ('94). I dunno - it seems they could have done better. It's really not bad; it's even good, but it's hardly my idea of a must-read.