sseldon88 's review for:

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

4.0

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I'm not one who regularly re-reads books, but in this case my third reading of A Moveable Feast felt like returning to a familiar place with an old friend both because I, too, was a poor person in Paris in my early twenties and because Hemingway is one of my favorite authors. There are millions of Parises and as Hemingway notes, Paris is ever-changing and different for everyone based on their experiences. Yet Hemingway captures that thread of Paris's spirit that allows for people to still find moments of satisfaction despite the stress and lack of funds. He writes from the point of view of a man looking back with the hindsight to notice and appreciate his youth and happiness in a way he didn't at the time. In this regard, his themes on youth, nostalgia, and value transcend a person's location and class.

Structurally, it's an interesting take on a memoir as each chapter is a different story and there isn't necessarily a plot although the book seems to follow chronological order. Hemingway strikes a forthright tone that seems more honest than most memoirs because he nods to the fact that everything could be a fabrication, the reader would never know, and it wouldn't matter anyway. There are appearances by Sylvia Beach, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald and more and it was fun to read about so many creatives and the circles in which they ran.