And in the midst of it he finds friendship, love, and his own self-worth. He watches people fall on hard times and move away, endures monotony, deep cold, harsh storms and odd, forced relationships. Instead, the story of a middle-aged man who hates himself even more than he hates his circumstance, moving back to his modest roots, finding a lot of darkness in the places he comes from. No beautiful starry-eyed twentysomething trotting off to exotic locations or big cities here. Its sort of the anti-coming of age story. I found this to be poetic and strangely uplifting. Quoyle finds redemption from a place that itself is bleak, full of hardship, and dying. Wanted to eat flipper pie with him and the girls. Before you know it, their presence is comforting. The thing of it is, they start to feel so honest.

Instead, Proulx builds her momentum slowly, slowly, taking you deeper into the lives of these characters, who started out so hard, unattractive, broken, and nasty. No secret codes to be found in paintings. There was no melodramatic conflict introduced. Then at some point in the second half, the book went from a nice little read to a ferocious page-turner, and I still am not sure how it became so compelling.

In the beginning it felt a little forced. And his wife Petal is a two-dimensional device created solely as a catalyst for the story to come. Quoyle, a big, damp loaf of a man, as Proulx describes him, is the definition of pathetic. I found the book initially to be a relaxing solace on my commute home after a busy day of work, soley because of its use of language and setting. Proulx's writing style is mesmerizing, almost hypnotic.

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