Stern Men

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Product Details

Author : Elizabeth Gilbert
Binding : Paperback
EAN : 9780618127337
Edition : 1
Number of Pages : 304
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 2001-05-11
UPC : 046442127332

ASIN : 061812733X

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Editorial Reviews

From Amazon.com

John Irving wishes. That he could be as mordantly funny as Elizabeth Gilbert, that is. With the publication of her first novel, Stern Men, Gilbert has been widely compared to New England's unofficial novelist laureate. And the comparison is a natural; this writer gives us a tough, lovable heroine against an iconoclastic, rural backdrop. Ruth Thomas grows up on Fort Niles Island, off the coast of Maine, among lobstermen, lobster boats, and, well, lobsters. There's just not much out there besides ocean. Abandoned by her mother, she lives sometimes with her dad and sometimes with her beautiful neighbor, Mrs. Pommeroy, and the seven idiot Pommeroy boys. Eventually she is plucked from obscurity by the wealthy Ellises--vacationers on Fort Niles for some hundred years--and sent, against her will, to a fancy boarding school in Delaware. (Sorting out her relationship with this highly manipulative family is one of the novel's crooked joys.) Now she has returned, and is casting about for something to do.

What Ruth does (hang around with her eccentric island friends, fall in love, organize the lobstermen) makes for an engaging book that's all the more charming for its rather lumpy, slow-paced plotting. Gilbert delivers a kind of delicious ethnography of lobster-fishing culture, if such a thing is possible, as well as a love story and a bildungsroman. But best of all, she possesses an ear for the ridiculous ways people communicate. One of Mrs. Pommeroy's young sons, "in addition to having the local habit of not pronouncing r at the end of a word--could not say any word that started with r.... What's more, for a long time everyone on Fort Niles Island imitated him. Over the whole spread of the island, you could hear the great strong fishermen complaining that they had to mend their wopes or fix their wigging or buy a new short-wave wadio."

The beauty of Gilbert's book is that she gives us an isolated rural culture, and refuses to settle for finding humor in its backwardness. Instead she gives us a community of uneducated but razor-sharp wits, and produces an impressive comic debut. --Claire Dederer

Customer Reviews

Don't waste your time (2003-09-28)

How can anyone give 5 stars to this book? It started well enough, but midway through the book I had lost interest, and worse, I began to really dislike Ruth. Ms Gilbert has the potential to be a good writer, but this is not a good book.

Could have been great, but...... (2003-07-23)

For those who were looking for another Gerald Warner Brace, you will be disappointed in the content but not in the writing style of Ms Gilbert. This could have been a great book.

For those who can identify with the folk who inhabit the costal towns and villages of New England, you will be pleased with the character descriptions provided in the book. The problem is not the idea of the story, nor the writing style. The problem is the emphasis placed on certain characters and activities that in the end did not matter and may have offended those of us who remember the books by G.W. Brace.

I hope Ms Gilbert will try again.

Solid, Engrossing, Excellent (2002-06-19)

A really fine new novel which I picked up after reading a favorable review in the NYT---and I've enjoyed the read. It's the story of an island off the coast of Maine (a fictionalized Vinalhaven, I think), mostly about the coming-of-age of Ruth Thomas, tenously-descended from the granite-quarry-owning rich family which once ran the island. It reminds me somewhat of the Bennett's Island novels by Elisabeth Ogilvie, but Stern Men has a much more modern setting and feeling. We certainly hear enough about the history of the island, its rivalry with its neighbors, and the ongoing "lobster wars" of its fishermen, but the characters are so intriguing and eccentric, the storytelling so solid, that it certainly never feels like an historical novel--nor does it feel like a romanticizing of a "vanishing way of life" and all that bushwah. These folks are grittily involved in making a buck and getting on with their lives.

I liked it as well as The Beans of Egypt, Maine or The Funeral Makers or Strong for Potatoes, all fine novels dealing with middle-to-lower-class Maine characters. A welcome addition to the genre.

Character Vignettes (2002-06-17)

This is not a very cohesive novel. It is more a series of character vignettes. The characters all, for the most part, come from one island, although there are appearances of others from a sister island. Once you get used to the fact that not much is - or will happen - the writing is good and the characters rather quirky. The book - and its main character - only seem to progress in the last sixty pages or so. Another reviewer is right on the mark when she said the book cover is misleading. The blurb appears to be written by someone who never cracked the cover of the book. Any similarity drawn between Stern Men and Shipping News is a tremendous disservice to the latter.

Unfortunately, the good writing does not get this book out of the quagmire the author produces by making inbred characters with no place to go on these two isolated islands.

Humorous and slow (2002-05-09)

The setting (Islands off the coast of Maine) and the promise of out-loud laughing prompted me to this book. I wasn't disappointed, although at times there was so much development that the book moved very slowly. The witty and sarcastic protagonist was funny, if not "too cool." (Surrounded by quirky dimwits, but what are her shortcomings? I like a little vulnerability in a character) This book was full of a cliches, but even more surprises! I'm not sure who'd I'd recommend it to. Probably people who love this part of the country, appreciate quirky characters, and are pateint enough to get through some slow spots.