The Short Stories Volume I (Short Stories (Simon & Schuster Audio))

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Summary: The Quintissential Hemingway
Review: A great anthology that could also be a primer on Hemingway. The beauty of this book is the access to Hemingway's work and personal timeline. You can see the writer at the height of his powers, you can see him hit his peaks and valleys. Similarly, you may notice Hemingway's sentiments changing from his green years to maturity.

This collection exhibits the best of Hemingway's storytelling, in his classics such as ...Francis Macombre, Snows of Kilimajaro. Up In Michigan, Big 2 Hearted River, his coming of age stories in the Nick Adams series, and a multitude of vignettes - some unfinished, though rarely overdone. Always present is Hemingway's commitment to evoking the sensual qualities of his surroundings and experiences - his reporter's instinct for capturing places and moments.

Ernest never uses his subjects to reach for higher truths. The immediacy of reality seems enough, if only he can capture it. Consistency is also seen throughout the stories in Hemingway's choice of characters - his breave, determined, cool and calm men and women, brief in speech but loud in actions. They dreams are muted by reality, beautifully subdued but resonant. Reading the stories, you can feel the writer grow, writing and revising, expanding and abridging. It is the style he cultivated in his stories that he perfected in his novels.

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Summary: stories that define what great short fiction is
Review: This collection of short stories defines what great short fiction is. Hemmingway constructs each story with total percision the way a genious archetect builds a perfect house, that is, with utter flawlessness. With a style of writing unique to only him, the great parisian pilgram, avid fisherman and chronicler of bullfighting gives us a timeless collection of literary gems.

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Summary: The leading American man of letters for the early 20th C.
Review: This selection of short pieces is an excellent and substantial part of Hemingway's ouevre. Some of them are now considered as classics of the short story form, such as "The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macowber" and "The Killers" -- a story which took, it is said, three years for Hemingway to complete. A clever stylist of American Modernism, his work is characterised by the staccato, laconic, minimalist sentences and expressions, which create a superbly "real", as opposed to merely literary, effect. Later examples of his work show how he further experimented with this style, in an effort to endow language with greater powers of precision and clarity. Unfortunately, the result is sometimes stilted and clumsy, particularly in the dialogue. This collection is recommended for its inclusion of some of his finest short works. Others, such as "This is Friday" and "Mr. and Mrs. Elliot" are not exactly literary gems, but the reader will be left to judge for him/herself.