Stern Men

Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your time
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A Wonderful Delight
Review: Stern Men is just a great read, a highly enjoyable novel. Elizabeth Gilbert gives us a wonderful, well told story. She starts by describing the known history of two small islands off the coast of Maine: Courne Haven and Fort Niles. She quickly focuses in on the difficult birth of a baby girl, Ruth Thomas, in the late 1950s on Fort Niles. A few pages later, we meet her as an 18 year old returning home to Fort Niles after graduating from boarding school in Delaware. The story of Stern Men mainly concerns itself with what Ruth does that summer--she spends time with her idiosyncratic friends, is reuinted with her mother, who lives off the island, and finally, falls in love. While this is not a fast paced novel, I still felt compelled to read it because the story is so engaging. Ruth and her friends were in my thoughts when I was not reading the book and I couldn't wait to return to Stern Men. The book is enjoyable, the story is funny and the characters are nutty, yet still believable. I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Don't read the back cover
Review: 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.