Men - Softcover

Diehl, Margaret

3.83

60 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0939149141 ISBN 13: 9780939149148

Publisher: Soho Pr Inc, 1988

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Stella moves, night by night, from man to man, searching for passion and encumbered by a need for love, in a contemporary novel of love, longing, and searching

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From Publishers Weekly:

The protagonist of Diehl's wise and witty first novel is Stella James, who was raised in New Hampshire by her grandmother, Lally Porter after her parents, who had lived with Lally after their elopement, ran away together when Stella was six. The two most important things in Stella's life are cooking and men. Most of the novel relates her various experiments in love, graphically but not crudely. Her first romantic liaison, while she is still in high school, is with Tobias, a young poet. But he breaks Stella's heart when she surprises him one day in bed with a young man. At college there is Teo, a spoiled New Yorker in whose parents' chic apartment they spend the summer after school is out. When Teo's love of liquor outweighs his lust, Stella's frustration leads her to other men, and she finds herself strongly aroused by, and even addicted to, sex with strangers. Teo's final gift to Stella is a plane ticket to San Francisco, where she settles down contentedly as a cook in a restaurant. At this point Frank, a photographer, enters Stella's life, and eventually she has to weigh her relationship with him against her compulsive desire for others. Diehl writes as pungently about food as she does about love and its pains and pleasures. This is an immensely appealing novel whose heroine is endearing and memorable.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Men are at the center of Stella James's life. Raised by her grandmother, she loses her virginity to bisexual Tobias and moves on to alcoholic Teo (with whom sex "did not involve any major activity"). A long series of affairs leads eventually to a steady relationship with the rather colorless Frank. Diehl writes sensually and with great naturalness about sex and food (Stella is a cook) but structures her novel less successfully. An ending that finds Stella settling into a house with Tobias and Frank to raise her six-year-old brother is more contrived than conclusive. For larger public libraries. Grove Koger, Boise P.L., Id.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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