(Published by Fourth Estate)
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When E. Annie Proulx describes Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist as “both rough-mannered, rough-spoken, inured to the stoic life”, we’re not quite expecting what comes next. These weather-beaten men of the land meet one summer guarding sheep on the remote Brokeback Mountain – and fall in love.
This short novella explores the kind of love that most people aspire to and proves that you can find a person you least expect, when you least expect it, in an equally surprising place. Thrown together to work in a lonely spot, the men grow close, sharing stories under the stars. One night after some beers, the line is crossed and their friendship is rendered physical. After the first encounter, Jack is quick to point out that he’s “not no queer” and Ennis adamantly agrees. What they share is a common regard and a love that each cannot explain. Four years later, both are married with children when they are reunited only to pick up where they left off on the mountain. Ennis admits he’s never done this with other men but reveals his inner feelings. “There’s no reins on this one. It scares the piss out of me”. Neither man can articulate his love for the other. Both are frightened just as much by their emotions as they are by what would happen if people found out.
Proulx articulates their agony so well – they love each other, but duty and society of the time dictates they should forget each other, raise a family, love their wives. Their only chance to be together is to sneak off on annual fishing and hunting trips – manly pursuits – to evade discovery. The places where their love is consummated are the inhospitable locales Proulx favours for her settings. Just as Quoyle is isolated in the wilds of coastal Newfoundland in The Shipping News, Ennis and Jack retreat physically and socially to the periphery of society. There are only two main characters to speak of but the landscape comes alive in Proulx’s writing. A “tea-coloured river ran fast with snowmelt, a scarf of bubbles at every high rock” and dawn is a “glassy orange”, and “pollened catkins like yellow thumbprints” hang about in the forest.
It’s a tender story, but grippingly told. We can smell the danger all around them. A supervisor may have seen them on the mountain; Ennis’ wife Alma suspects them. Jack tells Ennis a gruesome story of two local men he knew who lived the way they wanted to and paid for it. It’s a harbinger for their doomed love but neither man wants to take the risk, despite being torn up by his feelings for the other.
Proulx is a real writer’s writer: her prose, her characterisation, the way she unravels a tale is effortless. This is a very emotional book and even though we don’t have a lot of time to get close to the characters (clocking in at 58 pages of large print), the story is affecting. The end comes quickly but the images and the story linger on, just as the memories of Jack and Ennis happy together forever on the mountain they fell in love on. Stunning.
The DJ 
The Shipping News by E Annie Proulx
