Islands in the Stream

Ernest Hemingway Press Reviews

Thomas Hudson, the painter in the book Islands in the Streamis Hemingway himself, attempting to come to terms with everything he loves - the clarity of a brushstroke, his three children, his ex-wives, his lovers, his whores, his friends, his cats, his rifle, his Booth's gin - Newsweek

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 - Saturday Review

Many of the episodes contain the most exciting and effective writing Hemingway has ever done - Saturday Review

Hemingway's style is a superb vehicle for revealing tenderness of feeling beneath descriptions of brutality - Guardian

Hemingway's most deeply autobiographical piece of work - Irish Times