Islands in the Stream Author:Ernest Hemingway For years readers have been impatiently awaiting the appearance of a major novel by Earnest Hemingway rumored to have been left among his writings at the time of his death. Islands in the Stream is that novel and it will certainly fulfill the expectations for a worldwide audience. In many respects it is unique among his works but especially so b... more »ecause of its variety of themes and moods. It contains the uncanny sense of life and action that has been characteristic of his writing from his earliest stories(In Our Time) to his last novella(The Old Man and the Sea). It also contains the warmth of the past recollected that inspired A Moveable Feast. But another charm of this book that has been relatively rare in Hemingway's published works, although it was never wholly absent, is a rich and relaxed sense of humor that enlivens scene after scene: sometimes ironical, sometimes ribald, always contagious.
The book is divided into three parts, or which the first describes the life of a painter Thomas Hudson in the mid-1930's o the island of Bimini in the Gulf Stream. His loneliness and also, in part, the routine discipline of his work are broken by the vacation visit of his three young sons, and there follows a series of lively episodes including one of the best descriptions of deep sea fishing ever written. The second part takes place a number of years later in Cuba in war-time where Hudson is engaged in secret anti-submarine activities. The greater part of the story takes place in an Havana bar, with some incomparable rich dialogue among a wildly divergent cast of characters including an aging prostitute, Honest Lil, who will sure stand as one of Hemingway's most vivid characterizations.
The last part takes place shortly afterwards on board Hudson's improvised Q-boat, hunting down the survivors of a German submarine. The assignment requires of Thomas Hudson a kind of discipline wholly different from his creative life as a painter but no less important to his integrity, and this part contains some of the finest action scenes Hemingway ever wrote.
Upon finishing the book the reader will have come to know the inner life of a complex and enormously interesting and an will experience the unique combination of sympathy and understanding that a work of literature is able to produce« less