Stern Men [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

Ruth, the protagonist in the story, is a blunt-spoken,independent, sometimes foul-mouthed young woman who has no trouble speaking her mind to the various fogies and other adults who all seem to know what is best for her. Her fresh, sarcastic, and witty responses make her come alive to the reader and provide plenty of laughs.

The novel does drag at about midpoint and delivers a fast and implausible ending that seems to have been thrown together without any preparation for the reader. Still, this is a refreshing story and a thoroughly enjoyable summer read. And the lobster facts at the beginning of each chapter are interesting as well as tied to the behavior of the book's characters. This one is worth your time and $$$.

She finds the humor, warmth, and irony in the normal physical or mental grotesqueness of the people who make up the small world of her protagonist, Ruth Thomas. Senator Simon, an aquaphobe who cannot leave the island or bring himself to attend the funeral of a drowning victim, spends his life researching shipwrecks and collecting artifacts for an island museum. The doomed child Webster Pomeroy, who stopped growing the day he witnessed his father's drowned body being returned to shore, beomces the Senator's assistant, his only skill his ability to dredge the mud of low tide for lost treasures. His mother Rhonda, the widow Pomeroy, for whom the joy of alcoholism disappears at her husband's death, becomes the great mother-figure of the novel despite her "failure" with her seven sons; certainly she is Ruth's best life-line. Ruth's real mother--an orphan as much by choice as by birth--deserts her when Ruth is only 9, choosing (for many reasons) a life of servitude to the wealthy Ellis family over her own marriage. But while many of these secondary characters reamin undeveloped, there mostly for the edification of the protagonist's character, Gilbert adds levels of copmlexity that defy stereotyping. By the end of the novel, the reader cannot even completely despise the despicable Ellis family!

The novel simultaneously entertains and enlightens, but Gilbert does not assault her readers with obvious themes. Instead her subject matter--like the epigraphs which introduce each chapter--creates a clever metaphor for the human condition. Mankind does indeed resemble the lobster: beneath the hard, grasping shell hides a sensitive, weak creature like the one Ruth once let slide through her hands to a certain death in the ocean. Gilbert pries beneath Ruth's "shell" and lets us watch her "molt" in this story of initiation into adulthood.

Best of all, Gilbert's prose finds an easy cadence with a simple, wry, humorous style that engages the reader, taking him along on the same search for meaning and morality that occupies Ruth Thomas's adolescent years. There are moments when her story inspires both laughter and tears--reason enough to wait expectantly for Gilbert's next novel!

Back on Fort Niles Island after four years away at boarding school, she must decide whether she wants to work on a lobster boat, look for romance, visit her mother who has lived in Concord since Ruth was a small child, or choose among any number of other possibilities. Whether or not Ruth chooses to attend college in the fall is also a decision that must be considered. What she decides, and how her actions shape her future, are the unobtrusive glue that holds this book together.

This book is essentially half of a good novel followed by a quick summation. Virtually the entire books deals with the summer Elizabeth spends on the island after she graduates high school. At the very end of the book, There's a quick chapter, called Epilogue, I think, where the author explains what happens to the the islands and the main characters over the next few years. Comparisons have been made with the author and John Irving; perhaps Mr. Irving's penchant for the use of epilogues in many of his novels, along with the New England setting of Stern Men have something to do with this comparison. ELizabeth Gilbert, however, is certainly no John Irving, at least not yet. This novel lacks the depth and complexity that are a trademark of Irving's work.

Stern Men is, however, flawlessly written and is an excellent summer read. It is wonderful escapest fare.