Rating: 
Summary: True At First Light
Review: After being dazzled by the brilliant simplicity and terse writing style of "Papa" in prior works, I was filled with grateful anticipation when I heard of plans to publish this book. What a letdown. It rambles, loops and especially dives. The Hemingway family should have given more thought to the literary standing of their patriarch and less to possible monitary gain. If you are in love with "Papa", read this book knowing it is a piecemeal job and not indicitive of his true talent. "Papa" would not be proud.
Rating: 
Summary: Papa Revealed in Unflattering Ways
Review: One of the most interesting stories that I have read about Ernest Hemingway described his patrolling for submarines during World War II as a booze-ridden exercise in self-indulgence. I was astonished to find that same quality described in the master's own hand in this mildly edited version of Hemingway's personal notes about his last African safari. Hemingway's son, Patrick, makes the same observation in an aside in the book's introduction. If you read this book as fiction, you will rate it somewhere around two stars. If you rate it as a journal, you will rate it around four stars. I chose the latter interpretation. This book is described as a fictional memoir, but I think the memoir part is here more than the fiction. Hemingway's problems with women, fascination with exercising authority, reticence in sharing his personal thoughts, and open courting of an African "fiancee" will probably make your realize that someone who can write like an angel may not have those same qualities in the rest of his life. There's a section in the book where his publisher sends a letter from a reader making these kind of critical observations about Hemingway's flaws as a person, and he is enraged by what the reader says. Yet the material in the book certainly supports the reader, rather than Hemingway's self-image. The book finds Hemingway at the head of a camp as a sort of temporary, assistant wild life ranger. His "job" is to kill off rogue predators that are destroying villager cattle. While camped there, Hemingway is authorized to kill a limited amount of the old and lame game to provide meat for his camp. The book is quite penetrating in capturing Hemingway's need to build fictional story lines in his every day conversations, to consume way too much booze, desire personal challenges in the classic masculine tradition (this goes as far as hunting at night alone with a spear), and becoming part of the daily life of the Africans he meets. The book's most interesting parts come in his description of the role and ethics of the person who is trying to help another hunt, in this case a massive, cattle-destroying lion that his wife wishes to shoot before Christmas. Last summer, I had the opportunity to visit Hemingway's family home in Oak Park, Illinois and learned a little about his formative years. His mother was the powerhouse in the family, earning an enormous income as a singer while his father, a doctor, handled day-to-day details. Hemingway apparently never forgave his mother for not being a traditional, nurturing mother of the type common in those years. As you read this book, you will see that Hemingway took great pleasure in practicing medicine without a license, undoubtedly feeling closer to his father's role model as he did. I wonder how much each of us feels compelled to play out the emotional dramas we experienced in our youths. Work on improving who you are, as well as what you produce!
Rating: 
Summary: This was better than not releasing it at all
Review: This book shows what was right about Hemingway as well as what was wrong. His writing ability continues to shine through but his subject matter shows what was so disappointing about some of his later works. I'm not what I would call an environmentalist. I hunt occasionally as do most adult males in this part of the country. However, the trophy killing described here and in "The Green Hills of Africa" is a bit much to take. Many people might wonder at the irony of the main character also working as a game warden of sorts. The female characterization here is also a typical Hemingway short-coming. The female lead is just a little too dependent on Hemingway and doesn't seem to be bothered by his affairs with other women. Hemingways women are always incomplete and totally dependent on his men. The story line doesn't offer much except a life that must get boring after a few days and we're kept there a lot longer than that. Still, even when the subject matter is as bad as this, it is something of a pleasure just to read Hemingway.
Rating:
Summary: Kitten and the Informer Say it All
Review: Ho-hum...trying to stay interested in this wishy washy tale of decadence on safari is challenging, to say the least. Before she died, I had a chance to spend a week with Mary Hemingway in Barcelona, Spain. I was the American consul and she was accomodating a request I made to speak at a Hemingway seminar. She liked Barcelona so much she remained for a week which gave me plenty of time to pick her brain. I didn't find a shred of Mary in the personal memoire herein reviewed. I can't imagine Mary talking or acting like the woman "Mary" in the book so I have to chalk it up to literary conceit. To call her Kitten is also an abomination as she was a hard drinking, two fisted, fiesty as hell outspoken journalist from the old school. Anyway, I bought the book to complete my collection of Hemingway material. I read it with less than pleasure and can only recommend it to die-hard Hemningway buffs/scholars eager to pick through the remaining crumbs of a faded and controversial career. Even his worst novel, "To have and to have not" shines along side this drivel. All that said, he was still one of the most fascinating and original artists America has produced. A Nobel prize winner the likes of which we haven't seen for years.
Rating:
Summary: The emperor has no clothes on this one...
Review: I hesitate to be completely negative in reviewing what may well be the last Hemingway novel to be published (although I use the word "novel" loosely here). There are occasional flashes of his brilliance sprinkled throughout the book, as well as images most other writers could never hope to match. Bottom line, though, the simple-yet-evocative genius of "A Farewell to Arms" and "The Old Man and the Sea" is woefully absent this time around.
To the extent that there is a tale to follow in the book, it could easily be covered in 100 pages or less, but Patrick Hemingway (who pieced the book together from his father's incomplete manuscripts) allows it to ramble on for over three times that long. This is something of a trademark of Hemingway, of course, but in his best works the reader's attention is held rapt by his narrative all the same. Here, that narrative is just plain dull most of the time. The final five chapters or so are bona fide page-turners, but getting to that point of the book can be a real chore. Longtime fans will be interested in a few passages along the way, of course. The naturalistic descriptions of hunting and the changes it brings about in the hunter, for example, are undeniably vintage Hemingway. Additionally, his patented chauvinism is not only in evidence, it takes center stage throughout most of the book. (One often gets the impression Hemingway is laughing at himself on the subject; or perhaps his son is trying too hard to acknowledge something.) But why settle for bits and pieces of what made Hemingway great when there are entire books of it elsewhere? The best thing I can say about "True at First Light" is that as a comparative piece, it's given me a better appreciation of his other works. And hey, as an aspiring writer, it's good to remember that even the giants put out a dud now and then.
Rating:
Summary: Like a setting sun
Review: Hemingway's "fictional memoir," whatever that is, desperately wants to possess the rugged, knowing voice of Hemingway's earlier works, but routinely either falls flat or rings false. In reading this, I felt as I was reading teh work of someone who wanted to write like Hemingway. As good as his earlier African works were - "Kilimanjaro," "MacComber," there is not much here except egoism and a general feeling of apathy; worse still, of complacency. Sentences either ramble or become lost in posturing. For example, from page 240: "I had the old, well-loved, once burnt up, three times restocked, worn-smooth old Winchester model 12-pump gun that was faster than a snake and was, from 35 years of us being together, almost as close a friend and companion with secrets shared and triumphs and disasters not revealed as the other friend a man has all his life." Make of that what you will, but it lacks the concision of even lesser works such as "To Have and Have Not." Patrick Hemingway writes that the old bear was thinking of Paris in the 1920's while writing this, and so there are bound to be comparisons to "Moveable Feast." There are, but for all the wrong reasons. As in "Feast," Hemingway takes the opportunity to smear the work of his contemporaries, most notably Alan Paton, accusing him of false or insincere piety. Paton's novel "Cry, The Beloved Country" has more compassion for the state of Africa and race relations there on one page than Hemingway expresses in this entire work, despite his condescending patronage of the Masai and Kamba natives. On a similar note, Hemingway relates a critical letter from an American reader and then ridicules the woman and a book critic she cites, attacking not their intelligence but their supposed lifestyle. Such petulance is unseemly when from a graduate student in workshop and shameful from a writer of Hemingway's stature. Finally, Hemingway goes through the usual histrionics about F.Scott Fitzgerald, this time about "The Crack Up" essays, but again nothing that can't be found (of better and more pursuasive quality) in "Feast." If you're looking for an introduction to Hemingway, this isn't it. If your value of his stature is insecure, this isn't the book either. Probably doomed to be a footnote in the Hemingway canon, "True at First Light" is neither true nor fair. Malcolm Muggeridge's "Chronicles of Wasted Time" contains a much more objective reminiscence of Hemingway, and almost anything by Paton or Chinua Achebe a better description of Africa.
Rating:
Summary: Picked It For English
Review: Dad bought me the book, seemed interesting, so began reading it for English class. Hemingway IS famous, right? It began...slow. I'm somewhere at page 125 and it's pretty dry. Sure, he may write nicely, with great descriptions and interesting tid-bits of his opinions, ideas, and emotions about Africa. However, besides his obsessive wife, his silent type second wife and this lion that just has to die, there's barely any plot. He goes onto these tangents and long proses that seem to run on. So you skip over it, and then you miss things. This book really isn't that much of an enjoyable experience. Then again, i'm only 15, so there may be a lot of symbolism or significance that I may not be understanding. Don't buy this book if you want leisure reading. Strictly for English classes...unless you get a choice. Try Harry Potter..haha.
Rating:
Summary: I've read better and I've read worse...
Review: This book is not one of the best written by Ernest Hemingway, but this work explores the truth behind Hemingway and his inner self. This explains the adventures that Ernest Hemingway explored while he was in Africa, falling in love with someone who wasn't his wife and not knowing which one to chose, and all so obsessed about being in charge. If you know how Ernest Hemingway writes, then by reading this book you could decide if it was an Hemingway book or not, by the way Hemingway writes his books and novellas. In my opinion this book, was better than The Old Man and The Sea but it was not one of the best books written by Hemingway, maybe its because I don't have the appreciation for his writing like my elders do, but when I when The Old Man and The Sea I understood the moral of the novella completely and others my age didn't understand the point of the novella. I do advise those who enjoy Hemingway's style of writing to pick this book up and read it, maybe you can appreciate it more than I did.
Rating:
Summary: Reaching Toward the Light
Review: One has to really LOVE Hemingway's writing, or be obsessed with either alcohol or the hunt, to delve into the mire. It's slow going even when he isn't recounting slogging through the mud.
Rating:
Summary: The Life of Ernest Hemmingway in Africa
Review: The book has a lot of deep thoughts interwoven throughout the text. Expressing how time goes by and not necessarily being a sad thing. It shows the wondering mind of Ernest Hemmingway and his cocky attitude toward everything through his eyes. Although it does not move much in terms of setting and happenings, it still shows the beauty of Africa, making the reader yearn to visit the continent. The fact that he did not Finnish makes it all the more appealing to me. The writer's death also makes it such a juicy true story. That is the whole thing that makes this book so great is the fact that it is true. If it wasn't I would not have such a love affair with it. I do not read that many books, but I do like to analyze them. My favorite part of the book is when he gets a letter of a woman complaining on how bad of a writer he is. At first he does not become that offended but later finding words to describe this lady. In that little bit of writing I found that he is writing directly from his thoughts. The type of person that should read this book is one that likes to get into the writer's possession and get lots of details about thoughts.
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