If you had to switch lives with a fictional character for a week,
who would you choose?
I was asked an unusual question by an international student this week. They had identified Canada and Australia as two popular study destinations. Then came the personal question: If you could live anywhere, would you choose Australia or Canada?
It was asked in fun, but it caught me by surprise. After all, I’m Australian. That is part of my DNA. So I tried to give a suitably light answer: ‘It depends on whether you prefer surf or snow.’ Australia and Canada share many similar values. Often it is climate, landscape and everything that comes with them that creates the difference.
Maybe that is why my mind drifted toward Quoyle in E. Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News. Quoyle inhabits a world very different from mine. At the beginning of the novel he is awkward, uncertain and damaged by life. His disastrous marriage has left him broken. He has little confidence in his own judgment and seems accustomed to allowing other people to tell him who he is. Then he moves to Newfoundland.
What changes him is not one dramatic revelation. It is the cumulative effect of place, useful work and belonging. Newfoundland is harsh and exposed. The sea is beautiful but dangerous. Weather is not simply scenery; it determines what people can and cannot do. The landscape demands something from those who live within it.
And slowly Quoyle changes. He finds work that matters. He begins to notice things. People depend on him. He becomes part of a community. Qualities that once seemed insignificant begin to look like strengths. He does not become charismatic or powerful. He simply becomes more at home in himself. That is what interests me about him.
I would not swap lives with Quoyle because I envy his life. I don’t. I’d choose him because I’d like to experience what it feels like for a life to slowly change. Proulx suggests that transformation is not always about becoming somebody entirely new. Sometimes it is about finding circumstances in which parts of ourselves come alive. Switching lives with Quoyle for a week may bring to the surface things that I never knew were there.
Newfoundland asks things of him. He has to participate, to work, to notice, to take risks, to belong. Some places ask things of us that other places never did, and in answering those demands we discover capacities we did not know we possessed.
Which takes me back to that original question. Australia or Canada? Perhaps the deeper question is not simply whether you prefer surf or snow. Perhaps it is this: What kind of person might I become there?
The Afterword 
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