Rating: 
Summary: "Portrait of a Serial Killer of Wild Animals"
Review: Safe to say this "nonfiction novel" hasn't aged well. Boozy banter from Westerners who view Africa -- its wildlife, its people -- from within a gauzy cocoon of privilege. Ernest & co. chase down majestic animals, admire them and blast away at them with shotguns. I found the descriptions of animals madly circling once shot -- desperately, futile-ly fleeing a danger they can't possibly comprehend -- profoundly sad. I had the sense the narrative was aiming for (and probably achieving for its original audience) a breezy, witty, urbane tone. It seemed to me in 2004 like so much reveling in privilege, power and manly pseudo-attainment.On the other hand, there's no way Hemingway could have portrayed himself, knowing full well that he would come across in certain passages like an egomaniac and a bully, without a great writer's ability to stand apart. He also explores the code of ethics within hunting -- the hunters' intense aversion to shooting females or young, or wasting meat. And his use of this English language is interesting and shot through with passion. But having said all that: read something else.
Rating: 
Summary: Restores My Faith in Hemingway
Review: This book worked on two levels. On one level it's a recounting of a big-game safari that Hemingway undertook with one of his many wives (referred to only by initials, POM) and two of their friends - Karl, whom he finds himself rivalling in a bid to bag the best game; Mr JP or Pop, in real life an acclaimed hunter/guide who apparently accompanied Roosevelt on a safari. The details can be a bit confusing as the four of them move, sometimes together and sometimes separately, across a lot of African country that is differentiated only by the quality of its game and a lot of long African names that are impossible to keep track of. Otherwise it's easygoing - this is Hemingway's simple direct prose at its best, and probably the most readable of his books that I've come across so far. There is a simplicity and contentment in his writing that evokes very well the lifestyle they led, untroubled by anything except the desire to shoot the perfect kudu; each day spent in a beautiful country eating, reading, walking and hunting, then going to sleep and waking to do the exact same things; where all triumphs and tragedies are to do with hunting and no world beyond that exists. For once Hemingway even has a happyending! It's certainly an eye-opener for the majority of us who, not being rich white expatriates in a time when environmentalism and animal rights hardly merited concern, will never embark on a safari. The fact that it's wholly non-fiction is a trifle surprising, for events build up to a convenient climax, and the ending contains convenient closure. Delve a little deeper and Hemingway allows us to accompany him through his thoughts - his reflections on Africa, hunting, writing, living. He has a knack for looking at things in an unique light, reducing concepts down to simple terms and insisting that this is the way things are... Also, an idea of the author himself - the type of person he is - is built up quite clearly, more so than in 'A Moveable Feast'. There the author as a distinct individual never quite took shape; here he does, a character with his own follies and graces.... but it's interesting and well-written - two
Rating: 
Summary: A very pleasurable read
Review: This certainly isn't in the same league as A Farewell to Arms or The Sun Also Rises, but it is still a very pleasurable read. Whether his literary experiment with this book worked or not remains debatable. Regardless, Green Hills of Africa is essential to understanding Ernest Hemingway the man, if not the writer.
Rating: 
Summary: Hemingway lets it all hang out
Review: This is the first Hemingway I read and it remains the best. People who think Hemingway only writes in short sentences haven't read "Green Hills of Africa." He uses the longest sentences he can use and there isn't a paragraph in the whole book that isn't magical. After this I read "For Whom the Bell Tolls," a big disappointment, the prose bored me half to death, except for one absolutely brilliant section: the brutal execution of the village fascists by the village commies, as told in flashback by 'the mujer of Pablo.' Then I tried "the Sun Also Rises" which put me to sleep; couldn't finish it, eventhough a third grader could read it. So skip those two "classics" and read "Green Hills," if you want great prose and then start on "African Stories" by Doris Lessing if you don't mind being blown away.
Rating:
Summary: Blah
Review: Written in descriptive prose of the African countryside, this book is simply a month of safari hunting in Africa, with little drama and no real end.
Rating:
Summary: A book that, thankfully, doesn't offend anyone...
Review: You'd think being about white men with guns in Africa killing animals would offend more people. But I suppose that, for once, true greatness shines through past little things like that. What I liked was how Hemingway didn't really set out to tell a story that began or ended, just a story. He didn't bore you with things not bearing on his tale--a month hunting in Africa, a real time in his life that actually happened--and how he painted a real picture of himself, of hunting, and of the beauty that was Africa. I'd risk saying that this is probably a lesser-known (or at least lesser-read) work of Hemingway's, but it really bears reading.
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