The Last American Man published by Viking, 2002

Reviews:
"Gilbert has a jaunty, breathless style, and she paints a complicated portrait of American maleness that is as original as it is surprising."
-Publishers Weekly
"Gilbert, a top-notch journalist and fiction writer, braids keen and provocative observations about the American frontier, the myth of the mountain man, and the peculiar state of contemporary America with its 'profound alienation' from nature into her spirited and canny portrait."
-Donna Seaman, Booklist
“Wickedly well-written... There are two parts to The Last American Man: Conway‛s personal story, which is fascinating enough, and the way it entwines with the American preoccupation with robust, can-do masculinity.”
- James Gorman, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)
"Elizabeth Gilbert has done a marvelous job of profiling Eustace Conway — a modern-day Jim Bridger whose every hour roaming American is laden with mythological magic. The Last American Man is, in fact, the best book of New Journalism to appear since Tom Wolfe published The Right Stuff. A truly delightful, outrageous, unforgettable saga."
-Douglas Brinkley
"The finest examination of American masculinity and wilderness since Jon Krakauer's 'Into The Wild.' To meet Eustace Conway is to be dazzled...Reading The Last American Man is like listening to a friend tell you about an ubelievable character over a bottle of house red."
-Outside Magazine
"Insightful...explores through the lens of Eustace Conway's particular life our modern infatuation with the myth of the pioneering man and succeeds in uncovering the human reality behind it."
-Los Angeles Times
"Conway is a character almost too good to be believed. In Gilbert, he may have found the perfect writer to tell his story."
-Atlantic Journal-Constitution
"Gilbert has written what may be her best book yet."
-Houston Chronicle

Stern Men published by Houghton Mifflin, 2000

Reviews:
"In this breezily appealing first novel, Elizabeth Gilbert presents us a heroine as smart, sly, plucky and altogether winning as her own prose; it's difficult, in fact, not to develop a knee-weakening crush on both."
— Jonathan Miles, Salon Books
"Thank God. Elizabeth Gilbert has written a novel."
—GQ
"Finding an Austin heroine in a lobster boat -- an irreverent and observant young woman, reeking of bait -- is one of the many delights to be delivered by Elizabeth Gilbert in Stern Men, her beautifully wrought and very funny first novel."
—Mirabella
"Ruth loves her island with a heroine's passionate wisdom, but she falls in love with a boy from the enemy clan...there's Romeo and Juliet in the drama of the young lovers."
—LA Times
"A howlingly funny first novel"
—San Francisco Chronicle
"While Elizabeth Gilbert is not the first writer to suggest that smart women have much to teach stern men, she puts the idea forward with rugged power."
—New York Times Book Review
"Rich as drawn butter and as comical as the crawly crustacean itself, Stern Men is high entertainment. Elizabeth Gilbert has penned a Dickensian tale; one wishes it ran in two volumes."
—USA Today
"A wonderful novel that will have you laughing out loud, Stern Men is an admirable debut from a writer obviously destined for literary longevity."
—Denver Post
"Gilbert's storytelling brio and keen intelligence prove irresistible."
—Newsday

Pilgrims published by Houghton Mifflin, November 1997, ISBN# 0395836239

Reviews:
"Two things are certain in Elizabeth Gilbert’s first collection, Pilgrims: her characters possess minds of their own, and they can talk. Oh, can they talk." a Ploughshares review by Don Lee Winner of the Ninth Annual Ploughshares Zacharis Award.
"[Gilbert] has all the hallmarks of a great writer: sympathy, wit, and an • amazing ear for dialogue."
— Harper's Bazaar
"Gilbert is keen on seeing as many of her characters achieve redemption as possible — in the most creative ways possible . . . She achieves the enviable feat of telling her characters' stories in their own words, on their own terms, without pomp or superciliousness."
— New York Times Book Review
"A young writer of incandescent talent." — Annie Proulx
"Gilbert has taken her experiences as a journalist, her encounters with people of every past and place, and infused them with the light and longevity of her own imagination."
—Chicago Tribune
"An imaginative range, assured comic touch, and dead-on dialogue that's truly exceptional."
— Philadelphia Inquirer
"Bone-dry wit and talent for summing up a character with a quick phrase . . . One is left marveling at Gilbert's fertile imagination and sharp style."
— Swing
"Hopeful, deluded, intoxicated, amazed, Gilbert's characters shoot across the sky, and she catches them like a skilled photographer just as they pop, before they crash, drown, or grow dull and fade away."
— Cleveland Plain Dealer