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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
From Library Journal
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
a late masterpiece,
By adead_poet@hotmail.com "adead_poet@hotmail.com" (Beaumont, tx USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Garden of Eden (Paperback)
The Garden of Eden is one of Hemingway's unpublished manuscripts. Though he worked on it for something like fifteen years, he never completed it, or at least to his satisfaction. But even in its 'incomplete' state, it is one of my favorite books. I can only imagine what it would have been like had he lived long enough to finish it to his satisfaction--another The Sun Also Rises perhaps. Still, even though the manuscript claims to be incomplete it has a solid flow of story, and pretty polished off. And while the ending isn't typically Hemingway, it is a strong ending. In fact, there isn't much about this book that is typical Hemingway. It's much closer and much more complex than the other Hemingway pieces I've read. It's more emotional. The prose flows more and has a lyrical quality. It's a sensuous story of love, sex, emotion, and madness. It's not the first Hemingway I'd start with, but definitely one of the first few you should read. It will help solidify your respect for the author.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mediterranean menage a trois,
By A.J. (Maryland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Garden of Eden (Paperback)
In this posthumous Hemingway novel, David Bourne, a talented young author who has just published his second novel to much acclaim, is on an extended honeymoon with his bride Catherine traveling throughout various hot spots on the Mediterranean. They're American, of course, and to Hemingway the best way to be American is to spend as much time as possible in Europe. As the title implies, the setting of David and Catherine's romantic idyll is nothing short of paradise, a splendor of leisure, food, and drink -- and there is indeed a lot of drinking.One day Catherine returns to the hotel where she and David are staying with her hair cut short as a boy's; this simple but suggestive act precipitates a flurry of homoerotic innuendoes that pervade the remainder of the novel. At Cannes they meet a beautiful European girl named Marita who is attracted -- sexually -- to both of them, as they are to her. She becomes their traveling companion and, with everybody's consent, makes love to Catherine and then to David, but not, I'm afraid, at the same time. If this menage a trois is supposed to represent the Fall, with Marita playing the role of the Serpent, it seems that Paradise is not yet lost. As a writer, David (like his creator) lets his life become his work, and he is currently inspired to write a story about elephant hunting with his father in Africa, a reminiscence of a transformative boyhood event. Catherine, an idle and apparently rich girl with no professional aspirations of her own except to char herself to a crisp getting the darkest tan she can, is jealous of his work and the authorial attention he gets; Marita, also rich (Catherine frequently calls her Heiress), is more sympathetic to David's intense artistic nature. He is clearly too narcissistic to be in love with anybody but himself and his own work, and being married to him means having to accept that, which may be too much of a sacrifice for Catherine to make. Hemingway's trademark is that he makes his characters so complex precisely by having them say so little. The dialogue here is laconic and breezy, as though verbosity would be tedious in a place of such beauty and with people so blithe and lax. The easy, free flow of the narrative, giving the impression of having been written on autopilot, belies the fact that Hemingway spent the last fifteen years of his life working on this novel sporadically, evidently putting a tremendous amount of consideration into the statement he wanted to make. Like most of his statements, it bears his unmistakable stamp of restlessness and of impatience with the normal course of the world.
5.0 out of 5 stars
wonderful, unflinching tale of love,
By Loren E. Clive "bonne vivante" (Pukalani, HI) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Garden of Eden (Paperback)
I enjoyed every page of this book, especially the last line. A lot of reviewers come down hard on it, but as is, much better than most fiction you'll ever read. You just have to take it as it comes, as the protagonist David Bourne does throughout the novel. Herein Hemingway offers no pat explanation of love, fidelity, etc, he just relishes the fine art of living and reveals the true cost of being in love. Not erotic in the sense of explicit sex scenes, but erotic in its very content, especially for the time period it is set in (post WWI, I believe), examining the roles people play within a relationship. An excellent read--you won't be disappointed.
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