[.ca] Through the Ruins (ISBN 0595154441)

Wow, Impressive:
I was really impressed with this book. It isn't just a story a story about a man coming to terms with his sexuality, but also with events that have turned his life upside down. It's about trying to cope with incredible changes. I think anyone could relate to Michael's grief and guilt concerning his wife, the happiness he feels with Peter, and how that adds to load he's holding. Who hasn't had times in our lives that we've spun in circles and not known where to start. It's also a story about families, the roles we're put in and all that is interwoven within them. This was developed so well, you feel as if you stepped into the pages and into these lives. This is a great start. I hope the next book follows through, I'd like to know what happens with Peter & Michael (happy ending I hope). The character's are fascinating and delving into them further would make a great second book.

Potential, but plagued by problems:
With _Through the Ruins_ iUniverse.com introduces readers to a novice writer, Stephen Hart, whose works reflects some potential. Hart gives readers some distinctive characters with the creation of Michael and his sister, Tracie, as well as with many of the minor characters that appear throughout the book's pages. Most of the characters ring "true." For his main character, Hart gives readers a man that is traumatized by guilt. Michael is a man who is freed to become himself only with the death of someone he truly loved. Hart, seeking to tell a somewhat unconventional story about these characters, edges close to a stereotypical gay male fantasy of the unhappy closet case finding and falling in love with a village hunk the first time he goes looking for love, with the two of them living happily ever after. However, Hart eschews a pat, traditional happy ending. That is the good news. The bad news is that _Through the Ruins_ cannot be considered a finished work. The book simply is too rough and does not deliver what it would appear as though Hart might someday be capable of producing. _Through the Ruins_ cries out for a good editorial hand-someone to help the author tone down the melodrama and save the reader from scenes of soap opera excess that occasionally rear their ugly head. As unique as the character of Michael is, he and his angst really does wear thin with the reader after a while-which may or may not have been the author's intent. Additionally, with stronger editorial guidance, Hart could have corrected the grammatical errors that readers will encounter throughout the book as well as sentences that contain thoughts and ideas that appear from out of no where and get dropped often at the end of a paragraph only to never be developed. Worst of all, however, is the fact that no writer, no matter how inexperienced, and certainly no reader who puts out hard earned money for a book, deserves the amateur production efforts that iUniverse.com have brought to _Through the Ruins_. The number of printing errors to be found on the book's pages is both appalling and distracting and the problems go well beyond just lacking good proofreading. It is obvious from the huge number of recurring errors involving the use of single and double quotation marks, capitalization, and the use of commas (or lack thereof) that the person at iUniverse.com responsible for getting the text into print simply doesn't know some very basic rules of English. Typos abound throughout the book, far in excess of what a reader would normally encounter: wrong words are used and homonyms are confused. At times words are omitted from sentences and at other times words are needlessly repeated in the same sentence making reading portions of _Through the Ruins_ either a guessing game or a sobriety test for the reader. The numerous errors that plague the text of _Through the Ruins_ distract the reader from Hart's story to the point that the reading experience is often frustrating and at times, painful. Assuming that the author, Stephen Hart, was allowed to proof his own text before it was published, he, too, must also bear some responsibility in this shoddy publishing effort. On the back cover of _Through the Ruins_ it is stated that Hart "is working on his next novel." Let's hope he will find a better publisher, a better editor, or a retired English teacher to help guide his efforts. It would be a shame to see his potential talent wasted and his readership frustrated and eventually lost due to continued inept editorial and publishing efforts.

Fiction with a mix of bittersweet reality:
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.

A wonderful portaint of a man's life!:
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!

A train wreck:
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.