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book_concierge's review against another edition
3.0
At the end of WW2, a middle-aged American colonel meets a young Contessa in Venice. He spends his days reminiscing about the war, duck hunting, drinking and dining with the young lovely. He knows he’s dying, but she gives him one last season of love.
This is so typically Hemingway! I read The Old Man and the Sea when I was in eighth grade, and I’ve been a fan of his writing since.
This isn’t his best-known work, and I read it only to fulfill a challenge to read a book that was a bestseller the year I was born. Still, there is something about his writing that captures my attention. The short declarative sentences make the work immediate and bring this reader right into the story.
But the older I get the more I’m disturbed by the way the women are portrayed … or more accurately, but the way Hemmingway writes the male/female relationships. Knowing his own history of depression (and ultimate suicide), not to mention his four wives, I see him projecting his own character on the page, and I’m getting tired of it.
This is so typically Hemingway! I read The Old Man and the Sea when I was in eighth grade, and I’ve been a fan of his writing since.
This isn’t his best-known work, and I read it only to fulfill a challenge to read a book that was a bestseller the year I was born. Still, there is something about his writing that captures my attention. The short declarative sentences make the work immediate and bring this reader right into the story.
But the older I get the more I’m disturbed by the way the women are portrayed … or more accurately, but the way Hemmingway writes the male/female relationships. Knowing his own history of depression (and ultimate suicide), not to mention his four wives, I see him projecting his own character on the page, and I’m getting tired of it.
alyx30's review against another edition
hopeful
lighthearted
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
hank_hell's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
eddiessnail's review against another edition
BORING
(to me, a non-fan of hemingways writing style so far)
(to me, a non-fan of hemingways writing style so far)
ztkatch's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
hgbush's review
challenging
dark
funny
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
ladymblack's review against another edition
challenging
dark
mysterious
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
robertlashley's review against another edition
1.0
Across The River and Through The Trees, Ernest Hemingway’s fifth novel, was published to a perfect storm of critical derision ( and Justly so). To a generation haunted by war, Hemingway created a colonel who bragged of killing 122. To an era still traumatized by Hiroshima and Dresden, he wrote of war in scenery flowery enough to be obscene. To a culture grappling with the experiences of blacks and Jews, he name checked a confederate general and forgot one of the most significant reasons World War II was fought. It was one of those epic failures that scar a career, the literary equivalent of Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait or Lauryn Hill’s Unplugged, something so bad it changed the perception of artist work for the rest of his career.
Even with The Old Man and The Sea, a novella IMO as good as anyone has ever written, Hemingway never regained the place in the public’s consciousness. If Papa had rendered his brand of War fiction lifeless all by his lonesome, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, and Tim O Brien killed it dead. The raised consciousness that came from the feminist movement shed more than enough light on his grotesque sexual politics. The explosion of Jewish and African American writers that saw this country from a new set of eyes rendered his heroism, his philosophy, and his prose style all but moot. There were reasons he had to go away, and this book-a portrait of masculinty in it's own filth-is one of them.
Even with The Old Man and The Sea, a novella IMO as good as anyone has ever written, Hemingway never regained the place in the public’s consciousness. If Papa had rendered his brand of War fiction lifeless all by his lonesome, Joseph Heller, Thomas Pynchon, and Tim O Brien killed it dead. The raised consciousness that came from the feminist movement shed more than enough light on his grotesque sexual politics. The explosion of Jewish and African American writers that saw this country from a new set of eyes rendered his heroism, his philosophy, and his prose style all but moot. There were reasons he had to go away, and this book-a portrait of masculinty in it's own filth-is one of them.
ajberkman's review
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.25
questionableburrito's review against another edition
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0