Stern Men

I wanted to like this -- I loved "Eat, Pray, Love", but it was slow, the ending was predictable and not satisfactory and I didn't find myself "liking" any of the characters, who were all deeply troubled and flawed. The best parts were the the facts about lobsters at the start of each chapter. I am

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glad it was only $1at a garage sale.

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I really enjoyed this novel. What a rough, funny, quirky character Ruth Thomas was. It was not what I expected at all and very pleasantly surprised me. Highly recommended. Those lobster men were tough!

Enjoyable book about girl growing up on an island off the coast of Maine with her father and an interesting cast of characters. Mother (sort of) came fro a wealthy family who were (or weren't?) trying to get her to leave the island.
I didn't see anything coming and enjoyed it to the very end.

Still liked this one better that EAT PRAY LOVE because it's very New England and the protagonist finally surprises me in the end.

The story of Ruth's unusual family unfolds slowly in this novel: her father is a native islander lobsterman, her mother is an adopted member of a wealthy family but really a servant who has moved to New Hampshire. Ruth has obeyed the demands of everyone--her father, his friends, the wealthy

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patriarch, and his factotem--but the year she is 18 she comes home from boarding school with a mind of her own. Throughout I just wished she would stand up for herself, and when one of the inevitabilities happened by the end of the book I felt myself breathe a sigh of recognition.

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I have not read "Eat, Pray, Love" so I had no expectations when I picked up this book. I was hooked immediately. It was Elizabeth Gilbert's quirky sense of humor that captivated me. I found the che characters and dialogue fresh and entrusting and many passages made me laugh out loud. It's been a

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while since I've enjoyed a book this much. All I heard about "Eat, Pray, Love" was that the "Pray" section was very slow. I now know that there doesn't have to be a lot of action for Gilbert to keep me engaged.

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This was a case of the right book at the right time. I took it on our trip to Maine, and happen to start reading it in Rockland, which is where some of it is set. On two islands off the coast lobster fisherman are at war. The story unfolds through the eyes of Ruth, a precocious, sarcastic girl, who

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has grown up rough. The story is nothing mine blowing, but it’s the characters that will stay with me. The widowed neighbor with her passel of boys. The tender bachelor set on creating a museum. The subservient mother indentured to a wealthy family that rules the island in the summers. More than anything, and her determination, fearlessness and loneliness. Reading this, while exploring the coast and eating lobster rolls, made it all the more memorable.

“As humans, after all, we become what we seek. Dairy farming makes men steady and reliable and temperate; deer hunting makes men quiet and fast and sensitive; lobster fishing makes men suspicious and wily and ruthless.”

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