On the Vineyard: A Year in the Life of an Island

Rating:
Summary: This book doesn't get it
Review: As somebody who lives on the Vineyard part time, I have to say this book was a big disappointment. Not everything in it is off base, but in general it makes it clear that the author doesn't know the Vineyard very well at all. The island is a great place, but it does have its flaws. Unfortunately neither its greatness nor its flaws were captured in this book. From reading the reviews it would appear the book is more relevant to Wisconsin than the Vineyard.

Rating:
Summary: This book is awful
Review: As someone who is intimately familiar with the Vineyard, I can't begin to describe how superficial, idiotic, and just plain awful this book is. In addition to being poorly written and uninformed, it reads as if the author just wanted to make some money and thought this would be a good way to do it. If you really want to learn about the vineyard, read the MV Times (MVTimes.com)

Rating:
Summary: ABSORBING LOOK AT THE PEOPLE AND ATTITUDES OF MV
Review: The few disgruntled reviews from MV'ers are understandable - no one likes to have their hometown (or island) knocked. The Vineyard is similar to many small towns in America - perpetually populated by the same families and their descendants, everyone knows his neighbors' business, and there exists some classism and gossip. But this beautiful place also boasts some very amiable hosts. Ambivalence toward day trippers can be attributed to human nature. There is something annoying about yuppie sightseers and their young families who swell the island's population and clog the scenic streets and restaurants, somehow disturbing the serenity of the place. Simultaneously, residents appreciate the economic feasibility of tourism. So there is a catch-22 with the year-rounds thinking "if only we could get rid of these pesky tourists, but keep their money flowing in..." This book provides a different take on everyday life and attitudes on Martha's Vineyard; it is unlike any tourist book you've every read. I love Massachusetts and enjoy all the historic sites and beauty unique to the northeast. And the residents of Martha's Vineyard are, in the end, just like the rest of us with the same human foibles, no better, no worse.

Rating:
Summary: A bad book
Review: The problem with this book is not that it says bad things about the Vineyard - there are certainly bad things to be said, as well as good. It's that both the bad things and the good things are off. The book reads like the author had never been there, and in fact, it appears that her time there seems to have been merely a few short trips.

So as a book purporting to be about a place, it's about as useful as any other book about a place which the author clearly doesn't know. Any tourist to the Vineyard could have written as good, which is to say as bad, a book. Frankly, any tourist to anywhere could have written this, as long as they were armed with a vineyard map.

Hopefully someone will one day write the book this could have been. For now, this belongs in the fiction category, in my opinion.