SOURCE: Klinkenborg, Verlyn. “The Princess of Tides.” New Republic 210, no. 22 (30 May 1994): 35–37.

In the following review of The Shipping News, Klinkenborg commends Proulx's descriptive talent, but concludes that the novel lacks emotional depth and resonance.

There is always, of course, a distinction to be made between a successful writer and the gravy that is ladled over that writer by the literary press. Recently, E. Annie Proulx (pronounced “proo”) has been served up hot. Her first novel, Postcards, won the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction in 1993—the first time a woman has won that prize. Her second novel, The Shipping News, won the 1993 National Book Award, and it has just been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. Proulx herself is a copywriter's dream: a survivor, a jack-of-all-trades, an independent cuss, a backwoods literatus, a fisherperson, a hunter, a woman who writes with the wolves, longhand. When quoted by reporters she...