Rich (3/5): The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Ugly. God don't like ugly. And if he's in a bad mood, he'll make sure you're born into a cursed family. Throw in a cheating nymphomaniac for a wife, and you're got Quoyle, the hero of the Shipping News. The only friends he's got decide to become truck drivers and leave him behind, alone with his two young daughters. You'd think he'd crumble. That he'd surrender his remaining chips and take leave of his losses. He's even swimming upstream, returning to his family's abode in Newfoundland, while everyone else with any sense is fleeing from there to get to the big cities.

This can't be good. For Quoyle, no, it's not, but for us, it's all good. We cringe whenever he has another accident. We feel the lump in his throat when, out of obligation, he asks advice on how to raise his own baby girls. This man wouldn't know how to ask for directions if he was lost, yet in these moments, he sheds his loser shroud and rises into the realm of the ordinary. Witnessing this is like watching a man, in a burst of adrenaline, lift a car from atop a hapless victim. And watching Quoyle rebuild his life is like watching Clark Kent learn to fly. It's one of the most engaging stories I've read in the past few years.