I haven’t read anywhere close to the full set of Hemingway’s short stories - slowly chipping away, so might as well get some on the board. I have done the super classics, and this collection actually contains a couple of them.

A Clean, Well-Lighted Place is quite possibly my favourite Hemingway story of all time. Seriously, I am in awe of how much he does with a few pages. I think I go through a whole range of emotions every time I read it. Why? Well… like I said, admiration for Hemingway’s choice of setting and character. Some random bar, very late night, close to closing time. Old man. Solitude. Regret? Sadness? Empathy? Apathy? Life? Fuck me.

The Snows of Kilimanjaro is beautiful too, as is A Day’s Wait. Come to think of it, there is a theme in the ones that I find most impactful. Hemingway Heads, I was also going to say that I enjoyed Fathers and Sons and The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber. Yes. Yes there is definitely a theme. I can’t help it; I’m just fascinated thinking about how death looms over us all, how we deal with it, make sense of it, go out to greet it. In that sense, this is about as good a collection of short stories as you can get. I often find it really difficult to give any collection of stories 5 stars, because that would imply that it was damn near perfect. This isn’t. No nadirs, but a couple of stories that phoned it in for me.

This collection of ten stories by Ernest Hemingway is dripping with testosterone. The stories involve hunting, the horrors of war, the wounded, boxing, and fathers. The majority of the stories were quite good, but I'll only write about my two favorites.

The title story is about a man laying in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro with a terrible infection in his leg. The vultures are flying, the hyena is crying, and the gangrene has an awful odor. The man is thinking back on his life, knowing that he has wasted time and talent. He will probably never have the opportunity to write all the stories that are in his head. He's made a habit of using rich women to fund his lifestyle, including the wife at his side now. He enters a dream state flying to the brilliant white snow on Kilimanjaro. Many of the regrets in the story are similar to events in Hemingway's own life so the tale is very poignant.

The last story, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is about courage and masculinity during a safari in Africa. The story is full of danger and ends with a twist. It reflects Hemingway's passion for hunting and other macho pursuits. Today many of us have negative attitudes toward trophy hunting of wild animals. But most of the stories were written in the 1920s and 1930s so need to be read in that context.

Haunting - a reflection into the dark mirror of eternity; but not the image you expected to reflect back in those last precious moments of dimming light - highest recommendation - should have read this years ago.