Her Newfoundland is one of remote outport villages, and would not be immediately recognisable to all visitors, or even to some Newfoundlanders. The lingo and accents, the vulgarity and apparent simplicity of some of the characters, would cause many urban Newfoundlanders to cringe. These same people wince at Newfie jokes, the adapted Irish and Polish cracks which are heartily consumed by their self-deprecating and good-humoured kin.

The island of Newfoundland, ‘the Rock’, as it is known, rises from the North Atlantic off Canada’s east coast. The coastline is dotted with fishing villages, like Proulx’s Killick-Claw and Flour Sack Cove, all battered by the same fierce weather and gales that blow through The Shipping News.

Newfoundland was a proud British colony for four centuries. Loyal to Britain, it withstood several overtures to join Canada. ‘Come near at your peril, Canadian Wolf’, was the oft-cited refrain of the anti-confederates. In 1949, forced into a corner by chronic bankruptcy, it joined Canada by the slimmest of referendum margins.

Like Quoyle’s parents and Aunt Agnis Hamm, my grandparents had joined the gravitational pull to the USA – ‘the Boston States’ – in the 1920s. Their dreams of economic prosperity were dashed by the Great Depression, forcing them back to their boats and logging camps. They voted for union with Canada in 1949 because of the promise of economic and social progress. Despite gains in living standards, Newfoundland is today Canada’s poorest province, with soaring unemployment and accompanying social ills.

As a result, young Newfoundlanders still leave in droves in search of greater opportunities. Few return for good. My father has a cousin in his fifties who recently returned after many years working in Calgary as a successful commercial artist. He returned to a village of just 300 souls, and he often entered my thoughts as I read about Agnis Hamm’s adjustment.

The eccentric character of Newfoundland, portrayed by Proulx, was shaped by its geographical isolation. The speech and accents exemplify this. In the 1950s, linguists discovered Elizabethan dialects alive and well in remote coves. Television and exposure lo the wider world have since diluted these, but accents are still so distinctive and regionalised that my mother can identify which of the seven major bays on the island people are from just by listening to them speak.

In her home village, people pronounce ‘there’ as ‘thur’, whereas in a nearby town it is pronounced as ‘that’. The distinction, forged over generations by separation, has survived the connection of the two communities by road. The island’s dialect and idioms are extensive, and a scholarly work entitled The Dictionary of Newfoundland English runs to hundreds of pages of living expression. Proulx’s characters speak this language fluently. I don’t know how long she spent in Newfoundland researching The Shipping News but her grasp of the vernacular is impressive.

Superstitions are common in the remote bay villages. My grandfather, a travelled and knowledgeable bayman, charmed away warts when he wasn’t fishing or running a taxi business. Ghosts are seen regularly, and omens read. Charismatic religions have found a fertile niche in the collective psyche on the island.

The outport villages of Proulx’s Newfoundland hold a special allure for me because I am from an inland industrial town. My family visited the coast frequently, for Sunday drives, weekends away, or for long holidays with my grandmother on the remote Burin Peninsula. Coming from a prosperous and ordered company town, dull as dishwater, I found the outports exotic and fun.

My sister and I would sit on my grandmother’s kitchen daybed during our annual visits, gleefully spell­bound by the foreign speech and odd ways of an endless stream of visitors. Like the Buggits’ kitchen, with Beety’s steaming kettle and stores of fresh bread and jam, New­foundland kitchens are community centres. It was always my regret that we could not visit at Christmas to join the ancient tradition of mummering, twelve nights of rollicking door-to-door masquerade parties.

Reading The Shipping News in my Melbourne home was like those visits to Nan’s, an escape to another, more colourful, would. E. Annie Proulx has captured something of the contemporary Newfoundland culture, and helped stir my fascination for my birthplace.