Last week, Jen read “Eat Pray Love,” a personal memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert about self-discovery. This week she investigates Gilbert’s first foray into fiction and comes out smiling, concluding, “Each page was a genuine pleasure.” Praise doesn’t come much higher than that so this novel goes straight onto our “Must Read” list.

This is a really great book.  It was fun.  It was smart. It was uplifting and downright entertaining.  I read Eat Pray Love last week and was rabid to get my hands on another book of Liz Gilbert’s.  I had no idea what she would be like as a fiction writer and was so pleased to find that she is just as good as when she is writing a memoir.
Stern Men is about two small islands off the coast of Maine.  It is about the people who live there.  The fishermen and the land owners.  The historical background of these people and the fight over money and turf.

It is about one woman, Ruth Thomas, who has the power to change everything.

The dialogue is marvelously real and clever.  The characters are so vivid and so likable that even the awful ones feel like people who might be worth meeting.  The likable ones are a marvel.  Liz Gilbert is a master of the funny smart-mouth character.  They just come alive under her pen.

As Ruth grows, her relationship to the other islanders deepens and grows.  She has ties to the families involved in both sides of the “lobster war” and only she can ultimately end it.  She stays true to herself but the manipulating factors that control her life run deep and even she is surprised by how far sighted they are.  There is more than we and she see.
Liz really has a mastery of glorifying the obvious and there are more roads to a happy ending than we predict.

The fate of Courne Haven and Fort Niles is held in our hands and I loved reading every minute of it.  Each page was a genuine pleasure.  The end gets there too fast but despite its abruptness we are pleased.

Jen has reviewed one of our favorite books this week.  We agree with her conclusion that “Eat Pray Love” by Liz Gilbert should be “required reading” for every woman.  It is indeed a delightfully refreshing approach to self-discovery and as Jen points out, how wonderful it would be if only we could all follow it  – as Liz did – in Italy, India and Bali.

Whenever a lot of people tell me to read a book, I, ironically, shy away.  Who knows why this is?  Maybe I like the surprise of finding it myself.  Maybe I have had the unpleasant feeling of dis-liking the heartily recommended book ( Loving Frank, The Shack, The Emperor’s Children).

This time I listened and I may have to again.

Eat, Pray, Love was fabulous.  Thank you Ms. Talbot, thank you.  It was a truly moving, mind-altering, heart-opening, cultural shock of a book.  Liz Gilbert is a good, good writer and being privy to her thoughts is a real pleasure.

I have found myself thinking on it so often I can not imagine nothaving found it.  Gilbert’s approach to self-discovery is so profoundly relevant to so many women’s lives that it should be required reading.  Everyone deserves to find out more about themselves.

If we could all do it in Italy, at an Indian shram and in Bali, it would be transforming to society at large.  As she says, one happy-centered person brings immeasurable joy to everyone around him/her.  You can not hope to change other people but you can make yourself a positive influence in the universe with far-reaching effect.

As Liz finds herself desperately needing to free herself from a crippling marriage, we meet her.  I liked her immediately and hoped she would accomplish nothing less than what she does.  She travels to find herself.  She travels to free herself.  She takes four months in three countries to discover what it is that will make her innately content.

In Italy she discovers food can open her heart.  In India she discovers that severe introspection is tough but life-alteringly beneficial.  In Bali she learns to find a balance between the two.  What a joy it is to be with her.  She learns and teaches us so much.

She takes a negative and molds it into a positive.  She searches for herself and finds the world is ready to help and to embrace anyone who wants to be better.  As Jack Nicholson says in As Good as it Gets,” (she) makes me want to be a better person.

What better compliment is there?

Jen reviews Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer this week.  She wonders whether it really is “just a coincidence that these books keep throwing themselves at me.”  By “these books,” she means books that cause you to reevaluate your life priorities and in light of the current economic situation, that’s perhaps something about which we should all be thinking.

Maybe it is not just a coincidence that these books keep throwing themselves at me.  The powers that be must really want me to pontificate endlessly about appreciating the important things in life, dealing with the non-crucial, and learning the difference.  Maybe they are trying to tell mesomething and you are just along for the ride.

Life As We Knew It is about a catastrophic, orbital anomaly that throws the moon out of whack upsetting the delicate balance of our planet.  The tides revolt, ash covers the sky, temperatures plummet and millions die.

Society at large is broken down to the bare bones.  Your family will keep you alive.  You will keep you alive.

No help.  That’s it.

Miranda, a teenage girl* lives in Pennsylvania with her Mother and two brothers.  Her divorced Dad and his new pregnant wife pass through.  A close neighbor is on the scene and a few friends, but her world keeps getting smaller and smaller.  As supplies dwindle to practical extinction, as gas prices soar and then it disappears, as town support vanishes, Miranda’s family learns to support itself.

There is no one and nothing else on which they can rely.  Is the prom important?  Is homework?  No.

Shelter is.  Food is.  Immediate family is.

Nothing else.

Like Laura Ingalls, World Without End, and the myriad of other books I have reviewed in this context, this is about changing your priorities.  Our present financial circumstances might be less extreme but it is all relative.  One man’s joy is another man’s burden.

The book is a good lesson, as well as a good story, in strength.  Man is capable of amazing acts of self-preservation and empathy.

Miranda must balance the needs of self against the needs of her family.  Everything must be savored and appreciated, most of all the love they have for one another that ultimately is the reason for living.

When I worry about bills, and schools, and relationships, what I … what we … need to remember is that very few of these issues are truly important.  Figure out what is first.

Take care of yourself and your family and those who can not help themselves.  Be kind and compassionate.  You need food and shelter.  You need love and safety.

A new Mercedes might seem critical but you know it isn’t.  (Give it to me if you just have to buy one.)

I know I am starting to sound like little Mary Sunshine, but the older I get and the more crisis I live through, the stronger and more focused I get.  Life As We Knew It will remind us how it’s done.

* it is technically a young adult book but that has never stopped me before and it makes no difference.  I also just finished the sequel The Dead and The Gone, which tells the same story through a different set of characters who survive the catastrophe in NYC.  Equally good.

Our editor has just resolved a huge mystery, namely, “Is Jen Mann real?” She had never met Ms. Mann, though every week a wonderful book review arrived from her. The two ladies have finally connected, but mysteries continue to brew in Lyme crafted by “Sinister Minister”, Steve Burt, … and Jen is right there to review them for us.

Steve Burt is a piece of work.  A minister at the First Congregational Church of Lyme by day, creepy short story writer by night.*  Most of ancient Sanskrit glorifies the necessity for balance.

Man is not one thing.  He is many.  Good and Evil are both part of the natural order.  You must embrace and work with both sides of your nature.  If you need someone to emulate, someone who seems to do this instinctively, Steve Burt is your man.

This week our favorite book reviewer divulges her favorite author.  Jen confesses Mark Helprin is her choice and takes us deep into The Pacific … to prove the point.  She says this book “moved her to tears in its unadulterated glory,” which translates roughly as “Go forth and read [it.]”

If I were to choose – well, I sort-of do – my favorite writer would be Mark Helprin.

When A Winter’s Tale came out, a book reviewer for The New York Times said that he was almost afraid to write his review for fear of not doing the book justice.  I empathize.  Truly.

The Pacific and Other Stories (The Pacific) moved me to tears in its unadulterated beauty.