Rating: 
Summary: beautiful and startlingly modern
Review: the only reason this novel doesn't get 5 stars from me is the abrupt "ending" of the novel in the last few pages. still, i wish there were half stars so i could give it 4 1/2. hemingway tells the story of the subleties and complexities of human sexuality set across a vividly beautiful backdrop of europe. it's surprising that in this so-called "individualist" day and age, we still feel the need to stick labels onto everyone and everything. this novel is not about lesbians, or homosexuality, for neither Catherine nor her husband nor their lover could possibly be described by either of those words. They were human, too complex for the categories we still put people into: not heterosexual, not homosexual. People, with varying degrees of desires and wants. Hemingway did a wonderful job of portraying this and the effects that these desires/wants had on the surrounding people. It is also about a descent into madness, about selfishness vs. self-destruction, about the games people play with their own and each other's emotions. There are no stereotypes or cardboard cutouts here. Perhaps that is why some people find this novel not to their taste. It is not meant to be a comfortable read. The only downside to the story is that the entire novel reads almost languidly along at a pace befitting the slow beautiful surroundings. But the end of the novel accelerates and then stops abruptly, jarring you back into the real world only to leave you asking, "and then what?" then again maybe that's what hemingway intended. i would recommend this book to anyone except those that are so narrow-minded they can't get past the sexuality issue. if anyone wants to discuss this or other hemingway books with me, feel free to send me an e-mail :)
Rating: 
Summary: Very poor taste
Review: The book was to strange to the point where I almost had to put it down
Rating: 
Summary: In the unfinished more is left said.
Review: The usual foibles of Hemingways style are still present in this never completed novel but perhaps cracks are visible in his defensive distance. It is these cracks that make this an interesting excursion for the reader familiar with his body of work. I myself feel that some of the fragility that may have been edited out of his work usually this time remains to add a more balanced tone. One of his richer works for its imperfections. The struggle with issues of sexuality raise themselves further to the surface than the old man of the sea may have liked - you can often ask yourself exactly how finished he himself thought it.
Rating: 
Summary: Moveable Paris, the sequel
Review: I've sometimes suspected that Hemingway actually said all he was going to say in "Big Two Hearted River, I and II." Reading this "Garden of Eden," a startlingly vivid but still posthumous cut and paste job, I did get feeling that this writer was trying to break some new ground. But the characters never get very far away from their drinks before they turn back and tread through the already established Hemingway routines. To name just a few problems, the story of the elephant that David Bourne "must" tell is derivative of Faulkner's "The Bear." The images of 1920s Paris and youth as Eden, of course, might work for some readers, but I find them self aggrandizing, as usual. And the style is the drone of the same old machinery. E.L Doctorow, in a review, suspects that Hemingway was trying something radically new here that didn't work. Not that his earlier stuff was bad, but some kind of major about face, some kind of turning his back on his own reputation, probably would have been neccessary for Papa to do what he really wanted to do here.
Rating:
Summary: Brilliant
Review: Hemingway afficionados will probably get the feeling that this is the novel that he always wanted to write. Hemingway's editor Maxwell Perkins has been left behind, and what we have left is unexpurgated author. The brilliant language is still there, the tension even more pronounced than most of his novels. I was startled by how modern the novel remains. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: The most stunning novel ever written
Review: If you haven't read this novel yet, please do! The devastating story leaves the reader with an aching love of all the characters, to the extent that s/he will never forget it. Hemingway has created my all time favourite novel, which I refer back to over and over again.
Rating:
Summary: Twisted
Review: Hemingway began this novel beautifully by describing the European coast and the hills of France and Spain. However, it took a twist when it began tale of lesbians and homosexuality.
Rating:
Summary: amazing-simply amazing
Review: I must say that this is one of the best novels I've read in a long time-I'll probably read it a dozen more times throughout my life. The symbolism, the emotion (and lack of), and the complexity of characters is miraculous. The narrative is just as perfect as you expect from Hemmingway. Anybody who sees simply sees 250 pages of perverse sex needs to add some dimension to their intellect because The Garden of Eden trancends far beyond the sex to relate one of the most complicated and brilliantly concieved relationships between a man and a woman written this century. NO-this book is not perverse-its amazing. Amazing and brilliant. But what else could you expect from Hemingway
Rating:
Summary: First 100 pages are worth reading, may skip the rest
Review: It looks like the second half of the book is compiled by far less skillful writer.
Rating:
Summary: The Garden of Eden? Hmmmm......
Review: This book starts out great, it romantisizes Europes beachs and 'charming' towns. The main characters are nice and everything is perfect. Then, the book decends into perversion and drinking/sex/drinking/sex and somewhere comes a side story about an elephant hunt. It's an ok read but not for younger readers.
| 
