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ISLANDS IN THE STREAM

Name: ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
Author: Ernest Hemingway
ISBN: 0684837870

by Ernest Hemingway ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 6, 1970

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As seems increasingly apparent to most of us, Ernest Hemingway was richly endowed, but he spent his genius long before he died. Across the River and Into the Trees was an embarrassment while he lived, and now, with Islands in the Stream, his posthumously published novel, we have a sad bequest indeed. His wounded giants, floored by fate or nada, love or war, once had his celebrated "grace under pressure," symbols of the lost generation, participants in pastoral myths smeared with the blood of the hunt or of battle, yet sophisticates, drinking and wenching, determined to be true, in a world of deceit and wretched idealism, to "the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion." it was a heady creed, engendered by history, nourished on character and circumstance, but it could not last. As Hemingway grew older, his experiences narrowing, his fame widening, image-making set in with insidious allure: he began to drift, floating along through echoes of past triumphs, the later works, even The old Man and the Sea or A Moveable Feast, seeming more and more the sum of his fantasies about himself. Thomas Hudson is the middle-aged hero of Islands, painter and expatriate, resident of Bimini and Cuba, shadowy survivor of affairs which turn "rotten" or of gorgeous memories, who kisses "hard and well." He has his code and his comrades, "the brave and the good," and loses his three sons (the two youngest in a gratuitous car crash, the oldest, an R.A.F. pilot, during the Second World War). Alone and stoic and inconsolable, he courts death heading a patrol boat scouring the Caribbean for "Krauts," feeling at last the engines coming "through the deck and into him," his friend Willie saying, "Oh shit, you never understand anybody that loves you." Hudson has a period flavor, a whiff of the museum, as does, with its meandering, mannered style, the book as a whole. There are moments of lyric concision, snatches of faultless description, a breathtakingly accurate re-enactment of a fisherman's ordeal, the old greatness glimmering now and again, all the more piercing, perhaps, when surrounded by so much that's stale and worn.

Pub Date: Oct. 6, 1970

ISBN: 0684837870

Page Count: 378

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LETTERS OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY
by Ernest Hemingway & edited by Verna Kale ; Sandra Spanier & Miriam B. Mandel

- BOOK REVIEW
DEAR PAPA
by Ernest Hemingway with Patrick Hemingway ; edited by Brendan Hemingway & Stephen Adams

- BOOK REVIEW
THE SHORT STORIES OF ERNEST HEMINGWAY
by Ernest Hemingway ; edited by Seán Hemingway

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.

Pub Date: July 11, 1960

ISBN: 0060935464

Page Count: 323

Publisher: Lippincott

Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE LAND OF SWEET FOREVER
by Harper Lee ; edited by Casey Cep

- BOOK REVIEW
GO SET A WATCHMAN
by Harper Lee

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- SEEN & HEARD
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- SEEN & HEARD
NYT Readers Voting on Best Book of Past 125 Years

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DISTANT SHORES

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2002

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...

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Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.

After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?

Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).