First off my opinion should not mean much to you. My opinion does not mean much to myself because I am 18 and I live a strange lifestyle where my hands and feet and back and heart are cold 90% of the time. Even while I sleep I am cold because, it is freezing here. But, I have read Hemingway at his best and I have read Hemingway when hes okay and I have read Hemingway when Hemingway most likely does not care what he is writing.
Islands in the stream was published after his death and it contains 3 parts.
I loved the first part about Tom Hudson and his friends Roger and the boys. After the first part you no longer hear about Roger or the boys or Joseph. Tom Hudson the painter eventually goes to Cuba and at the end he joins the war or something and there is a lot of war and ship lingo that is complicated
The first part is beautiful and Hemingway came up with a forth part of this novel which came to be known as The Old Man and the Sea. In the first part of the novel Tom Hudson's boy David catches a large swordfish and struggles for hours. I will not tell what happens.
I almost feel Hemingway wrote the novel for himself. Maybe he wanted to do something with it, but half way through he said, "Ah screw it" and simply wrote what he wanted to write. The book talks about a lot of alcohol and I believe he may have been mentally distressed while he wrote this novel.
I highly recommend the first part of the novel and a few pages into Part 2 which is called Cuba. I love Hemingway and in my opinion he is one of the greatest writers of all time. I am currently reading Animal Farm by George Orwell and I believe that to be a great novel. I know it dives into socialism and some of the characters are based on Stalin and guys like that, but I'm not much of a history buff. perhaps someone could explain it to me simply through the messaging system on this site.
Well I hope you enjoyed my review. I am an average man and a poor man and I have a poor mans opinion. I am sorry I am not an academic, but these values were not instilled upon me while I was a child so I no longer care though I am in college I am just slogging through one day at a time.