Ernest Hemingway: An Illustrated Biography

Rating:
Summary: No new material here, but an interesting pictorial biography
Review: Sandison is capitalizing on the rush for books on the 100th anniversary of Hemingway's birth. If you know nothing about Hemingway, the book is valuable, but Sandison's account of the life is a mechanical recitation of facts gleaned from the Lynn and Mellow biographies. Many of the well-reproduced photos lose their effect because of a faux sepia tone or a blue tint. The prose is often turgid, suggesting that Sandison would do well to reread and imitate Hemingway. Authorial or editorial errors abound. To cite from pages 77-80 only, Bumby's nanny is spelled "Rorbach" and "Rohrbach," the Fitzgeralds' daughter is "Scoltie," and "pseudonymous"--difficult enough to pronounce--gets orthographically spanked as "pseudonomymous." The book is good for bedtime reading, but it is not scholarly by a long stretch.