MEN WITHOUT WOMEN

Rating:
Summary: Great weekend reading.
Review: "Men Without Women" by Ernest Hemingway features a glimpse into the genius that is Hemingway. I found it to be a great read during a summer weekend. I especially enjoyed the Nick Adams stories and the story about the matador fighting one last glorious bullfight (one of Hemingway's favoright subjects). "Men Without Women" deals with subjects both everyday and serious such as love and abortion. This short read by Hemingway makes a great introduction for anyone wanting to begin reading Hemingway. I highly recomend it.

Rating:
Summary: Early Hemingway stories
Review: Hemingway's short stories have always been hit & miss with me. Some of them don't really do anything for me, none are among my very favorite short stories, but most of them are well-written and thought provoking. Such is the case with this set.

Hemingway offers us an assortment of masculine characters, mostly picked from his favorite types of male personas: soldiers, bullfighters, mobsters and prizefighters. Despite the title of the book, there are a smattering of female characters in some of the tales. They rank with the standard fare of impetuous women that Hemingway likes to write about.

The scope of the stories is quite broad, featuring painful topics such as abortion, breakup, heartbreak and being past ones prime. The latter theme is taken up in THE UNDEFEATED, THE KILLERS and FIFTY GRAND and later on re-appears in Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. FIFTY GRAND, which details the demise of a washed-up boxer, is my favorite short story in this collection.

Stories such as IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, and NOW I LAY ME introduce motifs that are echoed in A FAREWELL TO ARMS, which was published just a few years after MWW.

Tho I've never been enamoured with the short story genre, Hemingway does rank as one of the best in the business - particularly in the American literary canon. Hence, followers of Hemingway as well as people who greatly enjoy short stories would likely appreciate this book.

Rating:
Summary: Early Hemingway stories
Review: Hemingway's short stories have always been hit & miss with me. Some of them don't really do anything for me, none are among my very favorite short stories, but most of them are well-written and thought provoking. Such is the case with this set.

Hemingway offers us an assortment of masculine characters, mostly picked from his favorite types of male personas: soldiers, bullfighters, mobsters and prizefighters. Despite the title of the book, there are a smattering of female characters in some of the tales. They rank with the standard fare of impetuous women that Hemingway likes to write about.

The scope of the stories is quite broad, featuring painful topics such as abortion, breakup, heartbreak and being past ones prime. The latter theme is taken up in THE UNDEFEATED, THE KILLERS and FIFTY GRAND and later on re-appears in Hemingway's THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA. FIFTY GRAND, which details the demise of a washed-up boxer, is my favorite short story in this collection.

Stories such as IN ANOTHER COUNTRY, and NOW I LAY ME introduce motifs that are echoed in A FAREWELL TO ARMS, which was published just a few years after MWW.

Tho I've never been enamoured with the short story genre, Hemingway does rank as one of the best in the business - particularly in the American literary canon. Hence, followers of Hemingway as well as people who greatly enjoy short stories would likely appreciate this book.

Rating:
Summary: Great weekend reading.
Review: The stories in this book leave the reader with no doubt that they are reading Hemingway, but the collection is rather unremarkable. Typical Hemingway strengths, including strong and descriptive writing of places and things, are present. But I found the stories themselves to be weak.

Rating:
Summary: ...and to top it off, there are BOXERS on the cover!
Review: These are some the best stories I have ever read. When I was in high school, my class was asked to read In Another Country for discussion. It was my first Hemingway short story, and an introduction to the novels we would be reading. I almost cried. His writing is just so gut-wrenchingly honest and raw. No overwrought explanations of emotion. You know how these characters are feeling simply because of how the speak and act. Hemingway is the master of context. The Killers is almost like a mystery story that never gets solved. Why doesn't he run out of town? What's going to happen to the big guy? I love this stuff and can't get enough of it.

Rating:
Summary: ...and to top it off, there are BOXERS on the cover!
Review: These are some the best stories I have ever read. When I was in high school, my class was asked to read In Another Country for discussion. It was my first Hemingway short story, and an introduction to the novels we would be reading. I almost cried. His writing is just so gut-wrenchingly honest and raw. No overwrought explanations of emotion. You know how these characters are feeling simply because of how the speak and act. Hemingway is the master of context. The Killers is almost like a mystery story that never gets solved. Why doesn't he run out of town? What's going to happen to the big guy? I love this stuff and can't get enough of it.