Islands in the Stream is one of my favorite or even the best Ernest Hemingway's books I've read.

Ernest Hemingway first discovered Cuba in 1928. He spent a good portion of his life in Cuba. His fondness for the island is evident in his life and in some of his writings. Most of Hemingway's time in Cuba was spent in Havana. From 1932 to about 1939, Hemingway took up residence in Room 511 of Havana's Hotel Ambos Mundos. In 1939, Hemingway became a permanent resident of Cuba with his purchase of the Finca La Vigía, a villa in the suburbs of Havana. Finca La Vigía was built in 1886 and was Hemingway's home from 1939 to 1960. Hemingway wrote many books while living at Finca La Vigía including - Islands in the Stream.

Along the north side of Cuba there are many strings of small island keys. These are home to a wilderness of coral in bright turquoise waters. Thousands of flamingos live in these untamed, verdant sanctuaries. Ernest Hemingway spent a lot of time in the waters of these island chains during World War II - hunting German Nazi U-boats in his thirty-eight foot boat, named -The Pilar. The secrete code name for Hemingway's covert operations was "Friendless," which he had coincidentally named after one of his favorite, big, black, sassy cats. Hemingway's adventures and the time he spent here were the inspiration for his classic novel, Islands in the Stream. Like Hemingway, the main character of Islands in the Stream spends time tracking German U-boats in the north side of Cuba.

Hemingway was known to frequently haunt two of old Havana's bars in particular. One of his favorites was the El Floridita which was originally founded in 1817 under the name of La Piña de Plata, meaning "The Silver Pineapple." Over time, the name eventually changed to El Floridita. Hemingway liked to order his modified version of a daiquiri, a drink with white rum, grapefruit juice, lemon juice, cane syrup, maraschino syrup, and crushed ice, all well shaken. The other bars weren't interested in accommodating Hemingway's daiquiri request. Because the El Floridita was the only bar that would, this became the place that Hemingway continually patronized for his modified daiquiris. Today, at El Floridita, there is a statue at one end of the bar honoring the exact spot where Hemingway always sat.

Islands in the Stream has been described as a quasi autobiography of Hemingway. A good portion of the book involves ordering daiquiris in a bar called El Floridita. The spot where Hemingway sat in the actual El Floridita is also described in the novel: "He took his seat on a tall bar stool at the extreme far left of the bar. His back was against the wall toward the street and his left was covered by the wall behind the bar."

Hemingway started writing this novel in the early 1950's. He mysteriously set it aside, and it was not found until after his death. Mary Welsh Hemingway, his fourth wife and widow, discovered it. Islands of the Stream was posthumously published in 1970.

I wish he’d got the chance to finish writing this (it was released after he died, so it would not have been edited as he intended). He was writing it in an attempt to regain some reputation after his last novel failed spectacularly. It has some really really beautiful bits, like when (main character) Thomas Hudson’s middle son is trying to catch this massive fish for about 30 pages, and everyone’s drinking and watching him fish and the adult men are giving him advice and it’s all just fishing language and ship language and Thomas Hudson’s inner monologue going ‘I really hope he catches it, it’ll boost his confidence forever’. That was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever read (spoiler alert- he did not catch the fish). However, after Part 1, it generally gets pretty boring. In Part 1, his 3 children add a lot to the story, but, when they die, the drinking and the isolation come to the forefront, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in small quantities, but I think if Hemingway had completed writing the book, there would’ve been more substance to it. The second part of Part 2 is tedious and Part 3 isn’t much better, until the final few pages, which are incredibly sad. Saying this, it depicts grief incredibly well, from the sudden news to the getting on with the day completely normally, to the having it hit you but then the pain instantly fades away, leaving you with an odd feeling. Feels awful to give it a 3/5, but the dull bits were really quite dull.

You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are.
*
Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away.
*
On the eastward crossing on the Ile de France Thomas Hudson learned that hell was not necessarily as it was described by Dante or any other of the great hell-describers, but could be a comfortable, pleasant, and well-loved ship taking you toward a country that you had always sailed for with anticipation. It had many circles and they were not fixed as in those of the great Florentine egotist. He had gone aboard the ship early, thinking of it, he now knew, as a refuge from the city where he had feared meeting people who would speak to him about what had happened. He thought that on the ship he could come to some terms with his sorrow, not knowing, yet, that there are no terms to be made with sorrow. It can be cured by death and it can be blunted or anesthetized by various things. Time is supposed to cure it, too. But if it is cured by anything less than death, the chances are that it was not true sorrow.

Written during his decline in Key West, this is far from Hem's great work. An interesting read, but please don't take this as any indication of his ineffable ability to write.

Both fitting and sad that this was the last novel Hemingway wrote - it is a colourful mix of everything his past works had done. It both represents what Hemingway loved to write about and the picture we have of the man in our minds. But, at times the book felt like it was only an imitation of his best works. A Moveable Feast, The Old Man and the Sea, even A Farewell to Arms, all feel as if they are being reworked into this one final piece. Very enjoyable but I didn't love it. However, it did include one of most brutally depressing paragraphs about grief I've ever read:

"On the eastward crossing on the ile de France Thomas Hudson learned that hell was not necessarily as it was described by Dante or any other of the great hell-describers, but it could be a comfortable, pleasant, and well-loved ship taking you towards a country that you had always sailed for with anticipation. It had many circles and they were not fixed as in those of the great Florentine egoist. He had gone aboard the ship early, thinking of it, he know knew, as a refuge from the city where he had feared meeting people who would speak to him about what had happened. He thought that on the ship he could come to some terms with his sorrow, not knowing, yet, that there are no terms to be made with sorrow. It can be cured by death and it can be blunted or anaesthetized by various things. Time is supposed to cure it, too. But if it is cured by anything less than death, the chances are that it was not true sorrow."

Este livro fez-me conhecer um pouco mais da personalidade de Hemingway, cada vez gosto mais de ler livros dele.
A forma como ele descreve o mar neste livro é linda.

Islands in the Stream hits so many classic Hemingway notes – nature & the outdoors, juiced up (toxic) masculinity, wartime chronicles, and (of course) exorbitant drinking. Hemingway was working on Islands in the Stream in his final years and he is fully in control of his craft, writing with totally gut-punching prose.

At the same time, it's difficult to read this without being overwhelmed and hyperaware of how personal the pain is that Hemingway is expressing in this devastating novel; he was in such a dark place at the end of his life. This book does not have the exuberant liveliness of books like The Sun Also Rises and A Moveable Feast, nor does it even have the satisfying and meditative resolution of later work like The Old Man and the Sea. Islands in the Stream is pure, unadulterated sorrow. It's like being regaled by the broken down boozer at the end of the bar about all the tragedies of his life. It feels like it shouldn't work, but it's so effective and powerful, probably because it is delivered with the singular authority (and talent) of Ernest Hemingway.

It's almost as if through characters like our protagonist, Thomas Hudson, Hemingway is having conversations with himself to work through his own feelings on topics including suicide, grief, and mortality. When discussing a mutual friend who killed herself and the merits of suicide (at the bar, of course), Thomas's buddy Roger reflects, "I don't know. I've seen it look very logical" (147). However, after further discussion, Roger changes his mind, "Fuck oblivion" (149).

I have often thought that there should be a reluctance on the part of the estate of a deceased writer to publish any of an author's works posthumously. Seriously, if the book was finished and the writer hadn't bothered to take it to the publisher, what would you assume his motives to be? An aversion to money, perhaps? This book is one of several that was published after Hemingway's suicide, and I wouldn't be at all surprised if he hadn't published it simply because he felt that it wasn't good enough. If that was the case, I agree with him completely.

There are some parts of the book that I found engaging; Hemingway knew fishing and firearms and draws the reader in when he writes on those topics. Regrettably, there is far too little of that in this book. When he is not writing about physical action, he bogs down in unlikely and tedious dialogue and improbable thought processes. His protagonist, Thomas Hudson, seems detached and dispassionate, almost to the point of being uninvolved in the whole story. And that, incidentally, is a name I will never forget...because Hemingway uses the full name each and every time he refers to the protagonist; Thomas Hudson did this and Thomas Hudson did that. I got heartily sick of the name by the time I toiled through the book.

Overall, the book has a dark and brooding tone, more in keeping with Conrad than Hemingway although Hemingway is never exactly a ray of sunshine in any of his works. I don't think Hemingway ever intended it to be printed. In any event, I feel that I have been robbed of some of my reading time.

Hemingway'in sanırım yazdığı son kitap. Yine müthiş, yine etkileyici. Bundan önceki eserlerinin bir sentezi. Biraz savaş, biraz deniz, biraz gezi biraz kadınlar. Bağımsız üç bölüm halinde kapsamlı bir roman. Thomas Hudson isimli bir ressamın odakta olduğu roman bazen romanın bir diğer kahramanı yazar Roger Davis üzerinden bazen de ressam ve iyi bir denizci Hudson üzerinden biyografik öğeler taşıyor. Hayatındaki hayal kırıklıklarını, yalnızlıklarını, cesaretini ve daha bir çok özelliğini romana aktarmış. Romanın final cümlesi ise romanı tam olarak özetleyen bir cümle:
"Seni anlıyorum Willie" der Houdson,
"Bok" diye cevap verir Willie "Sen seni sevenleri hiç anlayamazsın"...

A story as tragic as the life of its author. After finishing it, I was left with a singular thought: “how tragic this life is when one has no Meaning, or when one’s Meaning can be taken away by the world.”

The contrast between the idyllic vacation that Thomas Hudson enjoys with his boys in the opening chapters and the grueling hunt for a Nazi submarine crew that fills the book’s final section is startling when one thinks too much about it. I imagine this reflects the sadness, pessimism and depression Hemingway doubtless felt when writing this book in the early 50’s, that eventually developed into full-fledged psychosis and, sadly, his suicide.

The themes explored in this novel are dark. Hemingway’s blunt, athletic and realistic style make this all the more stark. What is left unwritten is usually as impactful as the sparse, unapologetically frank words he does include. As I understand, Hemingway usually drafted his novels with the people and events being extremely close to their real-life inspiration, only “erasing his tracks” in later drafts, so the real-life inspiration would be less obvious. This second-pass never happened with this book, which is why it’s so obviously auto-biographical in so many portions.

This isn’t the best book I’ve ever read, but it is still the work of a masterful wordsmith, and I was sad when it was over.

The version of this book by Ernest Hemingway that I read was published 1970. It was published posthumously by his wife, which she claimed they only made spelling/error corrections and minor cuts - no rewriting, however. I forget how I acquired this used book, but I am sure I selected it because I believe Hemingway is an author worth reading, and I wasn't disappointed with this book.It takes place in the 1930's and during WWII and is located on several islands in the Caribbean, hence the title, since these are the islands in the Gulf Stream. The book takes place in three separate parts with the same protagonist in all three. Presumably the protagonist was a somewhat autobiographical figure. I found it to be a well-written, interesting book. The last line of the book really hit me - "You never really understand anybody who loves you." I am not sure why, but it resonated with me. I will donate this book.