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Called a failure your whole life? Quoyle was too. Then he moved to a rock in the North Atlantic and slowly found out he wasn't. 🪢
Who it's for
Quoyle begins the book as someone who has absorbed every insult he's ever been given: a big, awkward man told since childhood he was a failure, then bound to a wife who despises him.
Feelings it meets
What it is
Annie Proulx's 1993 novel, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award, follows Quoyle, a newspaper reporter from upstate New York. After his parents' suicide and his wife Petal's death in a car accident, Quoyle moves to Newfoundland, his family's ancestral home, with his two young daughters and his aunt Agnis Hamm, and they settle in an old family house on Quoyle's Point.
Where to find it
In print (Scribner/Fourth Estate), widely in libraries (Libby/Hoopla) and as an unabridged audiobook. Not public domain. A 2001 film adaptation exists.
Before you start
Heads up: Parents' suicide; child sexual abuse.
Age: Ages 16+
the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts;George Eliot, Middlemarch, Chapter LXXXVI
