Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
I consider this novel a real work of art. The first section of the triptych shows the hero living a solitary life on an island in the Bahamas. He’s experienced some hard things, but has dedicated himself to art and it’s rewarded him. The character is a painter, which allows Hemingway to render the scenery with a detailed eye.
Every page of this novel pulses with love. Hemingway loves the sea. He loves to fish. He loves guns. He loves to drink. He’s a slave to art. You can see that it’s the work of a man who is absolutely uncompromising with himself. He won’t let himself write a bad sentence, no matter how much he himself suffers for it. Whatever he’s writing about, he loves it too much to let himself write a lazy sentence about it.
There’s extraordinary tenderness. His sons come to visit, and you love them as their father does.
And then the world of the novel is as cruel as the real world, and as senseless. The other two triptychs are of the protagonist, broken by that cruel world. He’s in a daily battle with despair, as with a chronic disease. He has to manage it at every turn; he’s become competent at reading his moods, and so have those around him.
There’s a fantastic section in which he gets some terrible news. Because of the time and place, and the nature of the news, several of his friends are able to guess it. They’ll be talking to him as normal, and then they’ll suddenly start crying. Because something in the conversation, totally invisible to the reader, showed it.
The protagonist is often controlled by such hidden currents of grief. Those who know him well can sense these currents dimly. But nobody can navigate them.