Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees. Penguin, 1966; first published 1950 Hemingway scholar Mark Cirino published a sporadically helpful ‘Glossary and Commentary’ to this novel (Kent State University, 2016); in his Introduction he provides a useful summary … Continue reading
I’ve received a comment from John Beall pointing out an error in my post of Oct. 7 2013 on the Ernest Hemingway story ‘Cat in the Rain’. I wrote there originally that it was first published in Paris in a … Continue reading
Part Two, continued: for pt one of this critique, click here The ‘American wife’’s prattling, repetitive list of wants now becomes a reiterated ‘want a cat’, culminating in a foot-stamping, petulant ‘ now’. Then the maid knocks and enters their … Continue reading
Ernest Hemingway’s story ‘Cat in the Rain’ was first published in New York in 1925 in the collection In Our Time. Hemingway dedicated the book to his wife Hadley. It was inspired by a visit he made with his wife … Continue reading
PART TWO: for part 1 of this critique, click HERE Fitzgerald invites him to accompany him on a trip to Lyon to collect the open-top car that he and Zelda had been forced to abandon there because of the bad … Continue reading
PART ONE (of two) A Moveable Feast (Vintage, London, 2000; first published England and the US by Scribners, 1964) begins with this epigraph: If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go … Continue reading
We’re going to see the new Baz Luhrman film ‘The Great Gatsby’ tonight (there’s a Guardian review of its opening screening at Cannes here, so finding myself in Waterstone’s this morning (I believe they’ve dropped the apostrophe, but never mind) I … Continue reading
Richard Powers, The Overstory. Vintage paperback, 2019 (first published 2018) Shortlisted for the Man Booker in 2018, awarded the Pulitzer Prize 2019. I didn’t get on with the fragmented structure and (as Lisa Hill described it in a comment), too … Continue reading
Elizabeth Taylor, A View of the Harbour. Virago Modern Classic, 2018. First published 1947 As its title suggests, this is a painterly novel. There’s an ensemble of characters who live in the picturesque houses, shops, pub and cottages clustered around … Continue reading
Patricia Highsmith, Those Who Walk Away (Virago Modern Classics, 2014; first published 1967) Texas-born Patricia Highsmith (1921-95) moved to a country cottage in Suffolk in England in 1964, apparently to be nearer the Englishwoman she’d fallen in love with. She wrote … Continue reading