The Shipping News Trivia Quiz

Answer: Petal

Quoyle meets Petal Bear at a meeting, where she tells him he wants to marry her. Quoyle is happy with Petal for a month, but the happiness does not last. Despite her cutesy-sounding name, Petal is a cruel woman who regularly has affairs with men all over the country, and barely pays attention to her and Quoyle's children, who she didn't even want in the first place. Petal hates her name and wishes she had been named 'Iron' or 'Spike' instead. Quoyle continues to believe the best of her, even after her death.

Answer: B. Beaufield Nutbeem

Jack Buggit is the owner of the 'Gammy Bird' and comes from a local seafaring family. Tertius 'Tert' Card is the managing and copy editor of the newspaper. Billy Pretty is a local man who deals with 'home news'. While the others are locals, B. Beaufield Nutbeem, always referred to by his surname, is English and deals with foreign news, which he gets via a radio, and sexual assault stories. He ended up in Newfoundland after sailing across the Atlantic and capsizing in the town of Fly-By-Night, and plans to renovate his boat, the Borogrove, so he can sail elsewhere. Quoyle's job is to cover shipping news for the paper and report the incomings and outgoings of ships.

Nutbeem and Card later leave the paper; Card moves to the US, while Nutbeem goes to Brazil. Benny Fudge - ironically, the man who led the destruction of the Borogrove at a party - takes over Nutbeem's job and Quoyle takes over as managing editor.

Answer: The 'Mockingburg Record'

While living in New York, Quoyle gets a job at 'The Mockingburg Record' through his old friend Partridge. Ed Punch, the editor, is looking for a reporter to cover local news. Quoyle is a poor writer, but good at getting people to talk, and Punch fires him temporarily but takes him back precisely because of this. Punch later fires Quoyle permanently, as the paper is not doing well and they have to cut back on staff. Partridge gets Quoyle the job at the 'Gammy Bird' by putting him in touch with Tert Card. Punch and the rest of the staff at the 'Mockingburg Record' - with the exception of Edna, the 'rewrite woman' - are later shot dead by a lone gunman.

The bird in the picture is a mockingbird.

Answer: Sunshine

When Quoyle moves to Newfoundland, Bunny is six and Sunshine is four. Bunny has recurring nightmares about a white dog. Both girls have difficulty settling in at first, but Dennis Buggit, Jack's carpenter son, and his wife Beety look after the girls and Dennis gives Bunny a carpenter's square as a present. Bunny eventually befriends Dennis's daughter Marty. When Mrs Lumbull, a supply teacher, bullies Herry Prowse, Bunny gets angry and knocks her over. Wavey later gives Bunny a white dog of her own, a young sled dog. Sunshine, being younger than Bunny, is more accepting of their mother's death and is much calmer.

The photo is of the Manatee Sanctuary Park in Cape Canaveral, Florida, otherwise known as the Sunshine State.

Answer: Car crash

Petal and her last lover, an unemployed estate agent, take the children and sell them to Bruce Cudd, a child pornographer in Connecticut, though the police manage to get them back before anything happens. Quoyle discovers Petal is missing when her boss, another of her former lovers, phones to say she didn't turn up at work and Mrs Moosup, the childminder, asks Quoyle for payment. Both Petal and her lover are killed in a car crash while driving to Florida, with Petal's neck being broken. It takes Bunny a long time to come to terms with Petal's death, and Wavey eventually has to explain to her that Petal is dead, not sleeping, and will never come back.

The car in the picture is a red Geo, the same make of car Petal and her lover were driving.

Answer: She and her husband had a happy love life.

Wavey's son Herry has Down's Syndrome, and he dances a hornpipe at a Christmas pageant while Wavey plays the accordion. Wavey is a widow whose husband Herold died in an oil rig accident, when the oil rig was destroyed in a storm and all the men on it drowned. She was pregnant with Herry at the time. Their marriage was not a happy one; Herold was an alcoholic and a womaniser, and Wavey says he 'treated her body like a trough'. She and Quoyle marry at the end of the book and move into the old Burke place.

The photo of a seal is a reference to the seal flipper pie Wavey brings over for Quoyle and his daughters. Quoyle thinks of her kisses that night as 'real Newfoundland kisses, flavoured with seal flipper pie'.

Answer: The severed head of Bayonet Melville

Bayonet Melville (hence the bayonets in the photo) and his wife Silver own a yacht, Tough Baby, that used to belong to Adolf Hitler. They commission Agnis to do the upholstery, but leave town without paying. While Billy and Quoyle are out sailing, Quoyle spots a suitcase. He opens the suitcase to discover Bayonet's severed head and is so shaken he cannot drive for two days.

Quoyle later finds a body in a wetsuit - and nearly drowns while trying to fish it out of the sea - which turns out to be the headless body of Bayonet, cut into five pieces. Agnis is eventually paid, with a stack of bills tied in the same blue leather used to upholster the yacht, and Silver is found in Hawaii with the steward of Tough Baby and arrested for murder. Quoyle sends the police bulletin to Agnis.

Answer: Yacht upholsterer

Agnis Hamm upholsters the interiors of yachts, like the ones pictured here. She opens a business in Killick-Claw, Hamm's Custom Yacht Interiors and Upholstery, that employs two other women, Mavis Bangs and Dawn Budgel. Agnis learned the art of advanced upholstery on a summer course, as she had previously upholstered a chair and enjoyed working with leather, and did one of her first jobs on a boat owned by the college's janitor.

She rented a shop in Long Island and ran her business from there, but decided to move back to Newfoundland after the deaths of Quoyle's parents in a suicide pact. Agnis moves into the building where her shop is after the Quoyles' house is destroyed.

Answer: Agnis's former lover, Irene Warren

Agnis makes a point of concealing Warren's gender and Quoyle assumes Warren is a man. However, although Quoyle does not know it, Agnis is a lesbian and Irene Warren was her late partner, who died of cancer. It was Irene who encouraged her to go on the upholstery course. Agnis names her dog after Irene so that she can have the pleasure of saying her lover's name multiple times a day. Warren dies during the book and Agnis buries her at sea. Quoyle also finds out later on that his father Guy sexually abused Agnis and got her pregnant; after Agnis collects Guy's ashes, she dumps them in the outside toilet as revenge.

The peace symbol is a reference to the name Irene, which means 'peace'.

Answer: Types of knot

To go with the nautical theme of the book, most, but not all, of the chapters are named after types of knot, with explanations from 'The Ashley Book of Knots'. Quoyle himself is named after a term for a coil of rope. The chapters named after knots also have pictures of knots, some of which are related to the content of the chapter; for example, the chapter in which Quoyle meets Petal is called 'Love Knot'. Quoyle's mad old cousin Nolan also leaves string with knots tied in it outside Quoyle's house and in his car as an attempt to drive him away.

The knot shown here is a clove hitch.