Through the Ruins

Rating:
Summary: Strictly Amateur
Review: ... My gay friend handed it over to me without letting me know his thoughts (he did not want to sway me one way or another).

The book seemed pretty amatuerish to me and the plot and characters I found dull. I was supposed to care about what happens but never really did. Turns out my friend felt the same way.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful read!
Review: I am a frequent customer of Amazon.com and I've never felt the urge to review one of the many books that I have ordered, until now. Through the Ruins is simply a wonderful read. I am waiting for Mr. Hart to give us a sequel so I can find out how Michael and Peter have faired Michael's "coming out". The book is a tender, almost frightening story of Michael Lyon's new found freedom of living life as a gay man. A "must read" for all gay married men living among us and for those men who may be considering marriage as a way to hide true feelings. And still a good story for all the remaining "gay romantic at heart" types out there, myself included. Do yourself a favor, buy the book and prepare to loose a little sleep until it's finished.

Rating:
Summary: A wonderful portaint of a man's life!
Review: I just finished reading Through The Ruins and loved it! I'd read earlier reviews praising it and thought I'd give it a try. Finally a novel about a gay man that doesn't hit EVERY stereotype known to man! A previous review had mentioned some typos. There were a few but no where near the amount mentioned or no more than I've seen in other books I've read over the years. This book is a rare gem that tells one aspect of the gay experience- an aspect that rarely gets much attention. There are no dance clubs in this book, no drugs. There are no graphic sex scenes and just because there's a gay man in a novel Stephen Hart does a refreshing change and keeps AIDS out of it. Gay does not equal AIDS and it was nice to read a novel that understnads that! A great read. You won't be disappointed!

Rating:
Summary: Couldn't put it down...........
Review: My being a straight man (with a few gay friends) I really didn't think I would enjoy this book. But after much debate with my friends I decided to give it a try. It was a great book! It was well written and the story line kept me wanting more. I couldn't put it down. I'd hate to admit to my friends that they were right, but they were! I will be on the look out for any new novels from Mr. Hart in the future.

Rating:
Summary: Downer
Review: No happy ending for this first novel by Stephen M. Hart. In fact, nothing much happy happens anywhere in this story about a gay man of 32 who thinks he has never met another gay person in his entire life (and this story is set in Massachusetts!). The only likeable character is the dog, Jake. The others are shallow and/or mean and/or self-centered.But what is really irritating is that the publisher, iUniverse, evidently does not employ any proofreaders. There are -- literally -- hundreds of typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in this 220 page book. Some are comical: "Do you have any bothers or sisters?" The same boo-boos can be found in other books from this house.Mr.Hart is said to be working on his next novel. Good luck.

Rating:
Summary: Downer
Review: No happy ending for this first novel by Stephen M. Hart. In fact, nothing much happy happens anywhere in this story about a gay man of 32 who thinks he has never met another gay person in his entire life (and this story is set in Massachusetts!). The only likeable character is the dog, Jake. The others are shallow and/or mean and/or self-centered.But what is really irritating is that the publisher, iUniverse, evidently does not employ any proofreaders. There are -- literally -- hundreds of typos, spelling mistakes and grammatical errors in this 220 page book. Some are comical: "Do you have any bothers or sisters?" The same boo-boos can be found in other books from this house.Mr.Hart is said to be working on his next novel. Good luck.

Rating:
Summary: An unfinished product
Review: The premise of this book had lots of promise. There's a wealth of materials and characters to work with in this book; however, there's little character development at all. The main character is the most fleshed out, but by that I don't mean he's completely real to the reader. It just means that the other characters were just not that well thought out.

There's so much more that could have been done with this book. I agree with the reviewer that said a better editor would have gone a long way. Not only would he or she corrected the many grammatical errors and factual flaw but they also would have pushed for a much more developed plot and characterization of the characters. It reads like a second draft that was accidently submitted.

Rating:
Summary: An unfinished product
Review: The ruins to which author Stephen M. Hart refers are the real and imagined pains of deception, lies, loss and self-loathing that are all too real when a closeted married man is outed against his will, by his own wife. Though fiction, the distinction of this novel is that it could very easily be the bio of countless men trapped in real-life by the scenario on which Hart's made-up story is based. In it, the unsuspecting wife finds a newspaper of gay personals and, to her excrutiating pain and anger, gets the feared confirmation that her husband is seeking sex out of the usual extramarital sense. Her discovery sets in motion the emotional ruins that follow in the wake, and they come to include the wife's sense of betrayal by the man she thought she loved and who loved her, the husband's guilt and self-loathing and self-imposed physical and emotional isolation. The latter isn't helped much when the wife dies, and the main character is left basically in a landfill of ruin from which he must somehow emerge renewed and go forward for, by then, there is no going back. Even in that rising from the ruins, however, the wife's death does nothing to clear the emotional wreckage. The kind of love that Hart's main character seeks does come his way but, we are not allowed to forget, it comes with a price. Promoted as essentially a gay novel, "Though the Ruins" is less that and more mainstream that some might expected. For that reason, the book is a lesson to both men and women in the need and wisdom of honesty and, in the end, might be telling us that love is too precious a commodity to abuse as a reason to stay in the darkness of the closet because, finally, that existence that almost always eventually is forced into the daylight promises nothing but ruin. Hart's novel is a moving account of one man's desperate journey to self-acceptance, and it's not as fictional as we might think.

Rating:
Summary: Potential, but plagued by problems
Review: This book was like a bad train wreck. I couldn't believe how horrible it was. I ended up skimming most of the book just to see how many bodies were left in the wreckage. The proof reading was atrocious. The story was amatuerish at best. Don't waste your time.