Strongly recommended: The Shipping News / E. Annie Proulx

"I'd set myself a task, so I squared my shoulders and, with grim determination, started reading. One of the best decisions I ever made, for I quickly found myself immersed in one of the best, most engaging works of fiction I've ever read."

"The protagonist of The Shipping News (for he could assuredly not be called a "hero") is Quoyle, a big man with a huge chin who is an established loser. Unappealing in appearance and uninspiring in personality, Quoyle is pegged as a wretch from day one by everybody, including his parents. At 36, he's a college dropout and a third-rate newspaperman who is caught in an endless cycle of firing and rehiring, forced to take demeaning temporary jobs at his editor's whim. He is married to an unashamedly philandering woman who has borne him two children she almost never sees, a heartless bawd who never misses work but brings her boyfriends home to have sex with them in the living room while Quoyle listens, silently weeping, in their bedroom. At the head of Chapter One, Proulx defines "quoyle" as "a coil of rope," and proceeds to quote The Ashley Book of Knots:

"A Flemish flake is a spiral coil of one layer only. It is made on deck, so that it may be walked on if necessary."
It it the perfect introduction to Quoyle; he is, in more familiar terms, a doormat.
"Quoyle's life is suddenly and forever changed by a rapid succession of momentous events. His parents, both diagnosed with cancer, commit suicide -- his father leaves a final announcement of the decision on Quoyle's answering machine in his last conscious moments. Quoyle's editor again informs him that he is fired, but that this time it is likely permanent. His wife, after taking and selling their two girls, dies in a car crash while running away to Florida with her latest boyfriend. And Quoyle finally meets his Aunt Agnis, who convinces him that the best thing would be to relocate to his family's ancestral home in Newfoundland. An old (and only) friend of Quoyle's secures him a job writing the shipping news for a paper there, and Quoyle packs up his recovered daughters, his aunt and her dog, and leaves New York for Newfoundland". (From: www.curledup.com)