Hemingway, Ernest – Islands in the Stream
I read Islands in the Stream once a year.
It is definately not the best Hemingway but is my favourite.
In a way it is an apology for his life.
The first book describes Tom Hudson, a painter of some fame, living on an island in the gulf stream; content, at last, with his life.
A summer visit of Hudson’s sons shows him happy, in control of the deamons that had troubled his earlier life (in Paris in the ’20s).
The second book, after Hudson’s sons have been killed is darker, concentrating on drinking & deceipt.
Too autobiographical for me.
The novel finishes with an almost pastiche of To have and to have not.
In the end, Hudson dies.
It is the first book that I like.
The film of it was made down to a budget, was tacky in places and I love it.
Interestingly, one of the books in the sequence was published on it’s own as a novella - The Old Man and the Sea.
All the best
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