Opening with a vivid description of bullfights in Pamplona, which Hemingway saw as “death struggle raised to an art,” and concluding with Hemingway’s own death struggle in 1961, Reef creates a memorable portrait of the writer and his times, and even readers too young for most of Hemingway’s oeuvre will enjoy armchair traveling to the bullfights in Spain, fishing expeditions to the Dry Tortugas and the Marquesas Keys, big-game hunting on the Serengeti and covering the Spanish Civil War. Along the way, they will gain a sense of the writer and his times and will even pick up some writing tips, including Hemingway’s insistence on simple, declarative sentences. The volume is attractively designed with well-chosen photographs, captions that add personality to the text, solid documentation and judicious use of quotations—some peppered with strong language—to help tell the story of this complex man. Accessible to young readers but most useful to teens as they begin to read Hemingway’s greatest works. (source notes, bibliography, list of major works, picture credits) (Biography. 10 & up)
