When Quoyle was a young boy, his father, Guy, tossed him into a lake, expecting him to swim naturally. Images of flailing in water and nearly drowning often resurface in Quoyle's memory when he is under stress.

Quoyle, now an ink setter at a small newspaper in Poughkeepsie, New York, lives a lonely life. He becomes infatuated with and marries a vivacious local woman named Petal. Petal is an unfaithful wife and a negligent mother to their six-year-old daughter, Bunny. Petal runs off with a lover, taking Bunny with her. Soon after, Petal and her boyfriend are killed in a car accident. The police return Bunny to Quoyle, informing him that Petal sold her to a black market adoption operation for $6,000.

Shortly before those events, Quoyle's elderly parents die by suicide together. Quoyle's aunt, Agnis Hamm, arrives to pay her respects to her late brother, though her real motive is to steal Guy's ashes (which she later dumps down an outhouse hole and urinates on). Agnis is moving to the ancestral family home in Newfoundland, which has been abandoned for 44 years. Agnis agrees to stay a few more days to help Quoyle through his recent turmoil, then persuades him to move to Newfoundland with her.

While struggling to build a new life, restore the derelict house, and take care of Bunny, Quoyle meets Wavey Prowse, a widow whose young son, Harry, has a learning disability. Wavey and Quoyle gradually develop a deepening relationship. Wavey eventually admits she pretends to be widowed, ashamed that her philandering husband left when she was pregnant. Quoyle learns that the ancient Quoyles were pirates that ran ships aground and savagely pillaged them. When those Quoyles were driven out, they moved their house over a frozen lake to its present location, now known as Quoyle's Point. Quoyle's cousin Nolan, an old hermit, reveals that young Agnis was raped and impregnated by her teenaged brother (Quoyle's father), resulting in an abortion.

Quoyle applies for an ink setter job at the Gammy Bird. Owner and publisher, Jack Buggit, instead hires him as a reporter covering auto wrecks and the town's shipping news. With no journalism experience, Quoyle struggles to produce decent articles, incurring managing editor Tert Card's constant scorn. Reporter Billy Pretty tutors and encourages Quoyle. When Quoyle's article about a millionaire's vintage yacht docked in town is popular with readers, Jack assigns him a weekly column profiling an interesting boat in port. Meanwhile, Agnis resumes her former occupation as a boat upholsterer to help support the family. She later confides to Quoyle that the woman she loved died six years earlier from leukemia.

Rather than running his newspaper full time, Jack Buggit commercially fishes to prevent his adult son, Dennis, who nearly died at sea, from obtaining his own commercial license, which are limited. Jack drowns while securing his boat in an oncoming storm. During the funeral wake at the Buggit house, shock and chaos erupts when Jack miraculously revives from a coma-like state caused by hypothermia. Jack gives Dennis his fishing license, believing the generational curse of Buggits dying at sea has been broken. After Jack's revival, Bunny is upset and angry at Quoyle, believing Petal could also have been "awakened," but she finally accepts her mother's death.

Agnis, Quoyle, and Bunny have been living in town during the winter months while their house is renovated. On the night of the big storm, Bunny awakes and can "see" the house at Quoyle's point being blown away. When the family drives to their property, they discover the house is gone, symbolically freeing them from the dark Quoyle legacy.

The film, while broadly following the plot of the book, makes several changes; notably, Quoyle is obese and has two daughters in the novel, but in the film he has only one daughter and is of average build. He is only a timid ink setter in the film and he does not begin writing as a reporter until after he arrives in Newfoundland. In the novel, he is already a journalist. Another difference is that several characters, such as the younger Buggit family, are deleted or merged.

The film was originally to be directed by Fred Schepisi, with John Travolta in the lead male role.^[2]

Box office edit

The Shipping News grossed $11,434,216 in the United States and Canada, and $13,256,225 in other territories, for a worldwide total of $24,690,441.^[1]

Critical response edit

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 54% of 131 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 5.8/10. The website's consensus reads: "Though solidly made and acted, The Shipping News is rather heavy-handed and dull, especially given the nature of its protagonist."^[3] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 47 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews.^[4]

Stephen Holden of The New York Times stated, "Although the misconception of Mr. Spacey's character gives The Shipping News a hopelessly mushy center, the surrounding performances lend the movie some ballast" and "The Shipping News is finally too efficient for its own good. Instead of giving you the book, it leaves you with the unfulfilled sense of having leafed through an elegant, studiously captioned photo essay of the same material."^[5]

Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "The nominally emotional moments feel unearned, partially because many of the book's edges and eccentricities have been softened, and the film's "we face up to things we're afraid of because we can't go around them" philosophy is not particularly inspired. All that's left is the severe beauty of Newfoundland, which catches the eye but, like the rest of the proceedings, does little for the soul."^[6]

Rita Kempley of The Washington Post opined that Lasse Hallström "ably brings the communities to life, though this film has neither the tastiness of the one nor the bite of the other. For better or worse, it smells of salt air, squid burgers and fishing boats. It's worth seeing at the very least because it is so different from standard Hollywood fare."^[7]

Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian described The Shipping News as "a profoundly tiresome, unconvincing, formulaic emotional blockbuster with some of the most outrageous accents" and stated, "This movie has an Irving- esque habit of mixing sugary material with stuff like incest, rape, suicide. It all leaves a very strange taste in the mouth, and fails to convince that this slushy tale is anything other than a strident, uninteresting bore."^[8]

Accolades edit

Won edit

• Florida Film Critics Association:
  1. Best Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett)
• National Board of Review:
  1. Best Supporting Actress (Cate Blanchett)

Nominated edit

• Art Directors Guild (ADG):
  1. Excellence in Production Design Award Feature Film – Contemporary Film
• BAFTA Awards:
  1. Best Actor in a Leading Role (Kevin Spacey)
  2. Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Judi Dench)
• Berlin International Film Festival:
  1. Golden Berlin Bear (Lasse Hallström)
• Broadcast Film Critics Association:
  1. Best Composer (Christopher Young)
  2. Best Film
• Golden Globe Awards:
  1. Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama (Kevin Spacey)
  2. Best Original Score (Christopher Young)
• Screen Actors Guilds (SAG):
  1. Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Supporting Role (Judi Dench)
• USC Scripter Award:
  1. USC Scripter Award (Robert Nelson Jacobs and E. Annie Proulx)
• Young Artist Awards:
  1. Best Ensemble in a Feature Film

• Official website
• The Shipping News at IMDb  
• The Shipping News at AllMovie