Rating: 
Summary: A surprisingly good novel, but is it Hemingway?
Review: Garden of Eden was published approximately 20 years after Hemingway's death. Carlos Baker, author of one of the most thorough Hemingway biography, described the manuscript as being lengthy and not very good. Thus, many were surprised when Garden of Eden was published in a shortened version, and was quite good. The novel explores themes of sexuality not touched on in Hemingway's other works, but present in his life. The writing, while not his absolute best, compares quite favorably to Old Man and the Sea, and Across the River and Into the Trees. It is far superior to Islands in the Stream, Hemingway's other major posthumous work. It is impossible to know how much of the strength of this book is due to the editing or comes from the original manuscript. Nevertheless, it deserved to be published and should be read by anyone who admires Hemingway's work.
Rating:
Summary: It's clear why he never published this one in his lifetime!
Review: Hemingway, at his best, was a master of the short story form and a reasonably good, though not outstanding, novelist. At his death he left a number of unfinished manuscripts, material in various stages of development that he was working on and, in some cases, struggling with. Knowing this, I hesitated to pick this book up for a long time, not wanting to read the master's own discards and figuring he knew what was good enough for publication and what was not and that what he left, at his death, was manifestly not. Reading ISLANDS IN THE STREAM some years back, I felt confirmed in this belief for that was a clumsy and self-absorbed effort and I think he must have known that. Later, I had a similar experience when I tried TRUE AT FIRST LIGHT, the most recent posthumous addition to his opus. More recently, however, I was bored for lack of fresh reading material and so picked up THE GARDEN OF EDEN to read on a plane trip. Although this one was unfinished at his death and ends in such a fashion as to drive that sad point home, it is nevertheless outstanding Hemingway. Aside from a few lapses here and there and the usual Hemingway tendency toward an almost juvenile self-absorption, this one positively hums with the power of the old Hemingway prose. As sharp and subtle as his best short fiction and as fresh and dynamic as his best novel, THE SUN ALSO RISES, this book unfolds, in crisply vivid detail, the struggle of a youthful writer to hang onto his sense of self-worth and devotion to his work in the face of his passionate love for a difficult and spoiled woman. Yet it's plain why Hemingway may have agonized over this one and held it back from publication, for the man it reveals is not the public persona he cultivated for most of his life. The protagonist in this tale, an avatar of the author (as in most of his works), is here a passive and unassertive sort who is unable to deal effectively with the woman he has married. Instead he succumbs to one of her whims after another though he feels they will somehow unman him, allowing her to change him outwardly while losing himself in the satisfaction of his writing, the only thing, besides his wife, we are led to believe he really loves. And yet when his wife brings another woman into their lives to create a menage a trois, the hero does not rebel though he finds himself more and more a plaything of the two women. Is he flattered by their attention and sexual interest, though his wife takes delight in being able to control and manipulate him to her will? And is she jealous of the one thing he has outside of her, his writng, and is that the motive that drives her to turn him into a creature she can wholly control? Hemingway's best works were rooted in his own life experiences and, indeed, as he plumbed those, his well went regrettably dry in his later years, something he sensed and agonized over at the end. Yet this tale is fresh and alive in ways that many of his other later works were not. The one really regrettable thing about it was that he never finished it so there are still some rough parts, where his control slips and he says what he should be implying (by his own famous dictum) and the end tails off into an insipid and half-baked moment of insight leaving the reader feeling cheated. Hemingway, had he focused on this one and finished it in his lifetime, would not have let it stand this way. But it's plain why he did not for this was not the man he wanted others to see. Still, this one is finely wrought and true, for the most part, to the old Hemingway "voice" and talent. I'm not sorry I finally broke down and read it.
Rating: 
Summary: This Isn't Your Father's Hemingway!
Review: After reading "The Garden of Eden," one is left to ponder true happiness and the unfufilling void that Hemingway celebrated in his postmodern approach to identity. Throughout the novel, darker sides to this void are presented through three main characters. The young writer (symbolic of Hemingway?) who struggles with the definition of true love as well as struggles to find the happy medium between relationships and work is tossed into a dangerously deceptive love triangle that ultimately ends in glimmering self-realization. Through the introduction of a three way "open" style marriage, Hemingway challenges the traditional views of society and the societal norms of his times. He allows the reader to look deeper into the Hemingway psyche by giving his all to a book that was his last uncompleted novel before suicide. Overall, the novel was both filling and emptying, challenging and enjoyable. Pick this one up if you're up for an inward journey filled with self-definition. Highly Recommended!!!
Rating:
Summary: Garden of Eden
Review: This being my fifth Hemingway Novel...I was pleased to find it a wonderfull piece of art....tragic yet beautiful....discriptive as only Papa can do. Would strongly encourage any newcomers to read this and Islands in the Stream before you decide of your love or hate for Hemingway.
Rating:
Summary: A great departure that works brilliantly
Review: For those that are familiar with Hemingway and his work and who have not read "The Garden of Eden," I think you will find the novel to be a significant departure from Hem's normal fare - and a refreshing one. Although strongly similar in style and form, the novel tackles issues of male and female relationships and sexuality head on, in a way that one typically does not see in Hem. Here, however, instead of blinking at the bright light of sexual relations, Hemingway stares straight at it and courageously exorcises some personal hang ups about the dangers of loving someone too much. I heartily reccomend this novel for a new look at Hemingway and his views on women and love.
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Summary: A perfect end
Review: I just finished this book today and found myself reacting the same way that the young girl does in the book. You find this piece of literature overwhelmingly sad, but at the same time you cannot help but love it. It is good and it is evil. It shows to perfection Hemingway's idea that "a man can be destroyed but never defeated." It is a great read, just as any Hemingway is.
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Summary: Little shown, much told
Review: More than most Hemingway, most of this story is under the surface, like an iceberg. For example, we do not see the hero's war record but we are shown he has one. He is as flawed as most Hemingway male protagonists. The damage is not physical. It is phychic, inside and invisible. The life on the Cote d'Azur, the travels, the hotels and restuarants, the relationship triangle, and even David Bourne's writing is the surface story. It is delicately & deliciously told. To find the real story you have to look beyond the surface. Almost all reviewers miss it, even the professionals. The real story is Bourne's unresolved relationship with his father and how he handles it.
Rating:
Summary: Does a fictional character ever know?
Review: Not much to add after the other reviews, but there was a point about half way through that it semed that all of the characters were aware of themselves as characters in a story. Heinlein tried this in several of his last works, but this one really does something with it. To me, that makes several of the parts that we have seen before useful as devices rather than as original work. It makes one think of particles interacting in a physics experiment. Given enough energy they tend to mutate and change.
Rating:
Summary: Visionary
Review: It is almost as if Hemingway, by magic, had a chance to glimpse at least some part of the last forty years of the Twentieth Century -- the forty years he missed -- before he wrote this book. Writing it when he did took courage. How much art, beauty and intellectual achievement did we lose to censorship of one kind or another during that war-filled century? At least this manuscript survived to grace a (hopefully and with fingers crossed) new century that will be better and more open -- a century that, as this book shows, owes much to the earlier explorations of our artists. The book shows the complexity, humanity and depth of the master.
Rating:
Summary: A Textual Feast
Review: Hemingway has long been known as a master of the English language and perhaps the greatest literary mind of the twentieth century, but with The Garden of Eden he moves into a new realm. With Hemingway's other works he tackles the masculine subjects many associate with him, in The Garden of Eden Hemingway brings to an erotic novel the same passion he brings to his other works. What he does for fishing, African safaris, and bull-fighting in his other works he does for fine foods, wines and living. This work is truly a textual masterpiece that needs not to be devoured, but instead like a fine meal or an aged wine needs to be savoured and deeply appreciated
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