Stern Men | Elizabeth Gilbert

Stern Men | Elizabeth Gilbert | Engaging, hilarious, thoroughly enjoyable

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Stern Men

	Stern Men Elizabeth Gilbert Mariner Books, 2001 - 304 pages average customer review:based on 39 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Wicked funny

A joyful romp of a novel that truly captures the Yankee spirit. Here is New England for you, on a platter. The characters are all too real and human and the laughs just keep bubbling up. I found myself totally engaged and had a hard time putting this book down. If you're from New England this will be like reading about the people you grew up with, even if you weren't on a small island off the coast of Maine. I sent a copies of this book to my moth-uh and sis-tuh as soon as I finished reading it. Brava! Looking forward to more from Ms. Gilbert. What fun!

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Engaging, hilarious, thoroughly enjoyable

A thoroughly delightful and engaging read, Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Stern Men' has been aptly compared to the works of John Irving, with its odd assortment of offbeat characters and situations, a New England setting, as well as employing high comedy to deal with serious subjects. Two remote Maine islands, Fort Niles and Courne Haven, where the main livelihood is lobster fishing, are engaged in a century old lobster war. The only thing that will permanently break this destructive trend, is the unlikely alliance of a young madly in love couple, Ruth and Owney, one from one of the feuding islands, and one from the other, but first Ruth must break free from the hold of old man Ellis, who has owned the islands for almost as long as the lobster wars have existed.

The title is a play on the job description of the person who sits in the stern of the boat and assists the lobersterman, as well as a description of the demeanor of the tough lobsterman. Gilbert successfully combines historical fact and lore on Maine coastal islands and lobster fishing to ground her novel with authenticity. Whether you have spent any time in 'Down East' Maine, as I have, or not, you will relish this wonderfully original story.

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A spot-on, Down East yarn.

Gilbert deftly captures Maine's wry, Down East humor and its flat, deadpan delivery in this seriocomic tale of lobstering and survival on twin islands, twenty miles off the Maine coast. Independent, cussed, and fiercely loyal to their own islands, the inhabitants are virtually a law unto themselves as they compete for the lobster market, the only commercial venue open to them.

In a deceptively simple style and the dry, straight talk of a native telling a tale which may or may not be a "tall one," Gilbert introduces Ruth Thomas, the feisty product of a rare interisland marriage. We come to know her relatives, the friends with whom she shares her challenging and sometimes monotonous life, and we watch her grow up and deal with the problems, conflicts, frustrations, and ultimate satisfactions of her isolation on the island. As the one person who really has access to the rival "players" on both islands, Ruth is also a reluctant beacon of hope for the future of the islands.

Gilbert's warm tale of this hard life perfectly captures the cadences and rhythms of the "down Maine" speaker. Her characters sound and act real--though not one of the says "ayuh" even once! Her story of the stern men shows them to be stern, hard men, but the story has heart, and "it's a good'un." Mary Whipple

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So you want to be a lobsterman

What a great story. Being a New Englander, I thoroughly understood the 'lobster wars' and what they entailed. The supporting characters--Senator Addams, Ms. Pomeroy, Mr. Ellis--they are wonderful characters, typical New Englanders. And the plot, very ingeneous. Even though I could see it coming, it was so entertaining to see it unfold.

Don't read the back cover

Stern Men was a well-written book. The characters were "real characters". The dialogue was realistic and wonderfully interwoven throughout the book. I'm sure I would have enjoyed it much better if I had not read the back cover.

What started out as an engaging book with several intriguing characters, ended up falling quite flat. While I fault Elizabeth Gilbert for my disappointment, I also must take some share of the blame. I made the mistake of reading the back cover. Thus I had certain expectations of the story line which, as I got closer and closer to the end of the book, seemed less and less likely to to be met. I kept asking myself, "When is all this stuff promised on the book jacket going to happen?" Evidentally the author thought the same thing. When it dawned on her that she was tired of writing this story and had not yet accomplished what she had set out to do, she decided to end the book abruptly and tied up everything in a very neat little 12 page epilogue.

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, page 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

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