Islands in the Stream - Hardcover

Hemingway, Ernest

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743253426 ISBN 13: 9780743253420

Publisher: Scribner Book Company, 2003

Synopsis

First published in 1970, nine years after Ernest Hemingway's death, Islands in the Stream is the story of an artist and adventurer -- a man much like Hemingway himself. Rich with the uncanny sense of life and action characteristic of his writing -- from his earliest stories (In Our Time) to his last novella (The Old Man and the Sea) -- this compelling novel contains both the warmth of recollection that inspired A Moveable Feast and a rare glimpse of Hemingway's rich and relaxed sense of humor, which enlivens scene after scene.
Beginning in the 1930s, Islands in the Stream follows the fortunes of Thomas Hudson from his experiences as a painter on the Gulf Stream island of Bimini, where his loneliness is broken by the vacation visit of his three young sons, to his antisubmarine activities off the coast of Cuba during World War II. The greater part of the story takes place in a Havana bar, where a wildly diverse cast of characters -- including an aging prostitute who stands out as one of Hemingway's most vivid creations -- engages in incomparably rich dialogue. A brilliant portrait of the inner life of a complex and endlessly intriguing man, Islands in the Stream is Hemingway at his mature best.

About this title

Review:

"Hemingway's most deeply autobiographical piece of work" (Irish Times)

"Hemingway’s style is a superb vehicle for revealing tenderness of feeling beneath descriptions of brutality" (Guardian)

"Many of the episodes contain the most exciting and effective writing Hemingway has ever done" (Saturday Review)

"This book contains some of the best of Hemingway's descriptions of nature: the waves breaking white and green on the reef off the coast of Cuba; the beauty of the morning on the deep water; the hermit crabs and land crabs and ghost crabs; a big barracuda stalking mullet; a heron flying with his white wings over the green water; the ibis and flamingoes and spoonbills, the last of these beautiful with the sharp rose of their color; the mosquitoes in clouds from the marshes; the water that curled and blew under the lash of the wind; the sculpture that the wind and sand had made of a piece of driftwood, gray and sanded and embedded in white, floury sand" (Edmund Wilson Saturday Review)

"Thomas Hudson, the painter in the book Islands in the Streamis Hemingway himself, attempting to come to terms with everything he loves - the clarity of a brushstroke, his three children, his ex-wives, his lovers, his whores, his friends, his cats, his rifle, his Booth's gin" (Newsweek)

Book Description:

Ernest Hemingway's last novel written before his death and his most autobiographical novel.

About this edition

• Publisher: Scribner Book Company
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0743253426
• ISBN 13: 9780743253420
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 448