Rating: 
Summary: lobsters with all the trimmings!
Review: This erstwhile swordboat captain offers her quirky insights about returning home to live with her parents; of island life with dogs, tourists & feuds. Against her better judgement, she becomes a lighthouse restoration committee member & offers us a microcosmic view of people, with good intentions, coming together only to be pulled apart by temptation & apathy. Ever since THE HUNGRY OCEAN, I have been a Linda Greenlaw fan. I like the way she looks at life & I enjoy her lusty vocabulary. In THE LOBSTER CHRONICLES, she takes us to sea only in the waters surrounding her island home. There she describes in rich detail, the life & times, & memories of lobster fishermen. Follow this author into her world of fogs & salt water; of handsome sternmen & klutzy handymen; of political fuses & social apathy; of befriending her father in his retirement & coaching her mother through her cancer. All the while, Linda Greenlaw ponders on the history of her clan & the rock on which they thrive; on what she will do with her life, & where she will live. THE LOBSTER CHRONICLES is a surprisingly engaging memoir of a life lived on a path less traveled.
Rating: 
Summary: Of warps, buoys and traps
Review: You may remember Linda Greenlaw as a supporting character (played by Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) in George Clooney's THE PERFECT STORM. Following that film, the real-life Greenlaw described her experience as the captain of a North Atlantic swordfishing boat in the riveting best seller, THE HUNGRY OCEAN. Now, in THE LOBSTER CHRONICLES, Linda has returned to her home island, Isle au Haut, Maine, to run a lobster boat. Fishing for lobster isn't as potentially dangerous or dramatic as chasing swordfish. And it's more of a 9 to 5 job where you get to sleep at night under a roof in your own bed. So, while Greenlaw shares enough knowledge about lobstering for the reader to get a feel for it, the bulk of the book is about related (or unrelated) people and events: the effort by a town committee to acquire the local lighthouse from the government, the state of emergency medicine on the isolated Isle au Haut, the prospect of a turf war with mainland lobstermen, her mother's battle with cancer, friends lost at sea, her father (who serves as sternman on her lobster boat), the scarcity of eligible bachelors, her culinary ineptitude, and her dislike of dogs. THE LOBSTER CHRONICLES is a pleasant but lesser sequel to THE HUNGRY OCEAN. Linda's self-effacing humor is perhaps the volume's major strong point, as well as the book's charm as a description of contemporary Americana. Some of Linda's prose is striking, as her description of the waves parading north as seen from the window of her home: "Some of the officers on horseback nodded shocks of white hair while masses of lower-rank sailors kept eyes forward and sternly marched in the most rehearsed fashion to the wind ... The trees lining the shore waved like spectators ..." By the book's end, I was saddened by Linda's undertone of unhappiness. She doesn't seem to like lobstering much. And she's fretful of the fact that, at 40, she remains unmarried and without children. Her loneliness is uncomfortably evident. ("I have spent much time waiting for Mr. Right, who does not appear to be looking for me.") Sail on Linda, and persevere. I wish you well.
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