Stern Men

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Stern Men

Editorial Review

On two remote islands off the coast of Maine, the local lobstermen have fought savagely for generations over the fishing rights to the ocean waters between them. Young Ruth Thomas is born into this feud, the daughter of one of the greediest lobstermen in Maine. Eighteen years old, as smart as a whip, and irredeemably unromantic, Ruth returns home from boarding school determined to throw her education overboard and join the "stern men." As the feud escalates, she helps work the lobster boats, brushes up on her profanity, and eventually falls for Owney Wishnell, a handsome young lobsterman. "Funny, clever and wise" (Seattle Times), STERN MEN captures a feisty American spirit through this unforgettable heroine who is destined for greatness despite herself.

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:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0
• This book is not anything like Eat, Pray, Love
  If you read her other book Eat, Pray, Love then you will not like this book. It was as dull as a picnic, plastic knife at a July 4th B.B.Q.. The story was alright but not enough to keep my interest. Not to mention that this book is riddled with contsant cussing for the character developmen (I guess) but not necessary. We get the point that they are tought men who fish for a living but goodness, gracious. I am not a prude, and have used my fair share of language that would require the tast of soap to swish... more info
• Excellent first novel!
  This thoroughly engrossed me and I finished this book within 3 days. The story takes place on 2 fictitious islands and concerns the warring between lobster fishermen. The story goes back and forth between these lobster wars and the lives of some of the quirky islanders. The main protaginist is Ruth and we start to get more and more involved in her personal story. The title isn't very apt because it is really her story more than the lobster wars that take up the latter half of the book. I was a little sorry... more info
• An island off the coast of Maine and some other quirky characters
  I read and enjoyed Eat, Pray Love by this author and decided to give some of her other books a look. This was a delightful vacation read. The place is quirky, the people are quirky and yet it all seems very familiar. Gilbert has a knack for bringing characters to life and having them ring true.
• entertaining
  Very entertaining. Good look at life on an island off of the NE coast.

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