Reviews

Across the River and into the Trees by Ernest Hemingway

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berubry's review against another edition

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reflective sad slow-paced

2.75

wldiv's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny informative reflective relaxing sad slow-paced

2.5

lonelyasfranz's review against another edition

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3.0

Vaguely amusing and mildly thought-provoking. Overall subpar.

book_concierge's review against another edition

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3.0

At the end of WW2, a middle-aged American colonel meets a young Contessa in Venice. He spends his days reminiscing about the war, duck hunting, drinking and dining with the young lovely. He knows he’s dying, but she gives him one last season of love.

This is so typically Hemingway! I read The Old Man and the Sea when I was in eighth grade, and I’ve been a fan of his writing since.

This isn’t his best-known work, and I read it only to fulfill a challenge to read a book that was a bestseller the year I was born. Still, there is something about his writing that captures my attention. The short declarative sentences make the work immediate and bring this reader right into the story.

But the older I get the more I’m disturbed by the way the women are portrayed … or more accurately, but the way Hemmingway writes the male/female relationships. Knowing his own history of depression (and ultimate suicide), not to mention his four wives, I see him projecting his own character on the page, and I’m getting tired of it.