ISLANDS IN THE STREAM
“A complete, well-rounded novel, a contender with his very best ... It is 100-proof Old Ernest!”
—The New York Times Book Review
“There are brilliant descriptions in the famous Hemingway style ... When he describes the close bonds of love and hate between a group of men who are engaged in a tight and dangerous adventure with death as the ultimate stake, he remains unbeatable in his craft.”
—Maxwell Geismar, Chicago Sun-Times Showcase
“Remarkably alive with voice and muscle ... Hemingway never displayed a brawnier wit ... There are memories of Paris as pungent and vivid as anything in A Moveable Feast. And the fishing episode ... is only slightly less dazzling than Santiago’s struggle in The Old Man and the Sea.”—Charles Lee, Philadelphia Bulletin
“Incredibly moving and powerful.”
—Robert Kirsch. Los Angeles Times Calendar
“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, The New Yorker
“Many of the episodes contain the most exciting and effective writing Hemingway has ever done.”
—John W. Aldridge, Saturday Review
“Marvelously alive, moving quickly and showing glimmers of joy and humor that you might never have noticed in his work before.”
—Bruce Cook, National Observer
“A part of American literary history, and his fans must read it, as they read all the rest with varying degrees of emotion, exhilaration and just plain joy.”
—William Hogan, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle
“An immensely touching book.”
—Hal Burton, Newsday
“I fell in love with the book at first sight ... caught up by the Hemingway voice (never truer nor more relaxed) ... A lovely, loving work, deeply sad and deeply felt.”
—Mary Ellin Barrett, Cosmopolitan
“As haunting as any fiction that Hemingway ever wrote.”
—Nicholas Joost, St Louis Globe-Democrat
“The work of an estimable writer ... Hemingway’s voice is still effective, hauntingly so.”
—Bernard Oldsey, The Nation