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Four Novels
Book by Ernest Hemingway
878 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 1983
30 people are currently reading
811 people want to read
About the author
Ernest Hemingway
2,255 books32.5k followersErnest Miller Hemingway was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Best known for an economical, understated style that significantly influenced later 20th-century writers, he is often romanticized for his adventurous lifestyle, and outspoken and blunt public image. Most of Hemingway's works were published between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s, including seven novels, six short-story collections and two non-fiction works. His writings have become classics of American literature; he was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize in Literature, while three of his novels, four short-story collections and three nonfiction works were published posthumously.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
Hemingway was raised in Oak Park, Illinois. After high school, he spent six months as a cub reporter for The Kansas City Star before enlisting in the Red Cross. He served as an ambulance driver on the Italian Front in World War I and was seriously wounded in 1918. His wartime experiences formed the basis for his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms. He married Hadley Richardson in 1921, the first of four wives. They moved to Paris where he worked as a foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star and fell under the influence of the modernist writers and artists of the 1920s' "Lost Generation" expatriate community. His debut novel The Sun Also Rises was published in 1926.
He divorced Richardson in 1927 and married Pauline Pfeiffer. They divorced after he returned from the Spanish Civil War, where he had worked as a journalist and which formed the basis for his 1940 novel For Whom the Bell Tolls. Martha Gellhorn became his third wife in 1940. He and Gellhorn separated after he met Mary Welsh Hemingway in London during World War II. Hemingway was present with Allied troops as a journalist at the Normandy landings and the liberation of Paris. He maintained permanent residences in Key West, Florida, in the 1930s and in Cuba in the 1940s and 1950s. On a 1954 trip to Africa, he was seriously injured in two plane accidents on successive days, leaving him in pain and ill health for much of the rest of his life. In 1959, he bought a house in Ketchum, Idaho, where, on July 2, 1961 (a couple weeks before his 62nd birthday), he killed himself using one of his shotguns.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews
November 1, 2020
It's old man and the boy at sea..
Slow and ....more
Slow and ....more
July 16, 2015
Some of the cruelest dialogue written is directed toward Robert Cohn. Going to keep going through EH's work.
November 22, 2008
A Farewell to Arms moved me deeply. I was no Hemingway fan in college, preferring Faulkner. I have learned to appreciate Hemingway's prose.
March 15, 2015
اسلوبها سلس جدا ورائع تشعر فيها بكل مشاعر سانتياجو وعمقها
June 12, 2021
La primera vez que lo leí fue en el 2008. Habia estado en Key West, habia visitado la casa de Ernest y tenia ganas de leer algo de él. Me acuerdo que bajé un pdf en ingles, lo mandé a imprimir y anillar.
Esta segunda versión la leo en castellano, una edición Vintage. Y la disfruté muchisimo, muchisimo mas, no por la edicion, sino porque en el medio, yo cambié. Ahora aguanto las disgresiones de Hemingway, es mas, las disfruto.
El viejo y el mar es un libro para leer todos los años. Ernest lo publicó en 1952, siendo un escritor ya establecido. Nueve años mas tarde, se pegó un escopetazo.
Esta segunda versión la leo en castellano, una edición Vintage. Y la disfruté muchisimo, muchisimo mas, no por la edicion, sino porque en el medio, yo cambié. Ahora aguanto las disgresiones de Hemingway, es mas, las disfruto.
El viejo y el mar es un libro para leer todos los años. Ernest lo publicó en 1952, siendo un escritor ya establecido. Nueve años mas tarde, se pegó un escopetazo.
July 1, 2025
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway – author of The Old Man and The Sea, which is celebrated as one of the 100 Greatest Books of All Time; my note on this is at https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... together with a look at two other works from the Hemingway magnum opera, and over one thousand reviews of books and films
The King Reader and Flow
9 out of 10
My favorite Hemingway novel would have been The Sun Also Rises https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... only somehow, I have read it twice, and on the last encounter it failed to enchant this reader, surely for subjective reasons
It clearly has a lot (or all of it) to do with reading about Ernest Hemingway, and other great minds, such as Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen and especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the latter has abandoned his children at the door of an orphanage, at a time when nine of ten would die in such conditions, and it was a chilling finding
Intellectuals https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/... by Paul Johnson does a lot to change the mindset of readers, it did it for me, notwithstanding the fact that I was not a great fan of Hemingway to start with, however impressive, emotional the story of The Old Man fighting the elements is
A Farewell to Arms is a love story, and a good one at that, this note is not meant to dispute the magnificence of this, or any other major work, it is all a question of what this subjective reader has taken out of it – ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ Hamlet – or could not bring with him, when the book is finished
There are ten essential elements of positivity: awe, interest, hope, joy, amusement, inspiration, pride, serenity, gratitude and above all, love, this is what the ultimate expert has discovered and you find it in her classic book, Positivity https://realini.blogspot.com/2015/05/...
It is intriguing to read about the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Scott F. Fitzgerald – for some critics, the author of The Greatest Book of the last century, and certainly one of the best of all time The Great Gatsby https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/09/... a masterpiece, indeed
‘Hemingway’s claim that he took a look at Fitzgerald’s member in le water, the men’s room, is treated with an odd informality given the intimacy of the act…’ there have been suggestions that there was a ‘homosexual tension in the atmosphere between the two fabulous writers’, who had very different styles…
Reading is not for business, I do not have a duty, ergo it must be for pleasure and then we have some formulas to see if one book fits the bill, say PERMA https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/... proposed by Martin Seligman, co-founder of positive psychology, where
P is for Positive Emotions, E for Engagement, R aka Relationships, M is for Meaning and A for Achievement, I will focus on Flow and the need for a novel to bring some sort of trance, higher state of consciousness, if not Nirvana – sometimes I feel that Flow and Nirvana are not exactly near each other, perhaps even opposite
The conditions for Flow are explained in Flow https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/... and they are - nothing else matters, it is an autotelic experience aka it provides enchantment, you are in control, there is constant and instant feedback, and finally, two most important here:
Challenges meet expectations or you are on the line between boredom and burnout, and time is relative, and in a good way I would add, taking the former, and trying to apply it to books, there are times when I see that I am not exactly thrilled by what happens in the book, or else, it is too much, impossible to comprehend
Alternating between tedium and overwhelming situations is not auspicious – the desert was formed when temperatures were extremely low at night, and very high at daytime – and in what regards time, the experiences can be magnificent, and then you feel you fly very fast with the narrative, and alternatively:
You get so much feeling, thought provoking material that it is also a time that sometimes feels as if you had a life spent with those marvelous characters…granted, when you expect so much, you may feel disappointed – the problem of having too high expectations of being what was called the Maximizer in another psychology classic
The Paradox of Choice https://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/... offers two types of humans, the Satisfizer and Maximizer, the former is happy with the very good, while the latter is always morose, because he wants perfection, he wants the Panglossian world, with ideals coming true
Then there are some other criteria, from Schopenhauer and his interdiction for bad books, to the quote of Umberto Eco – the reader has five thousand lives, eternity backwards – to which I add, surely, but we do not want to live perpetually with personages we do not like, or amending even this, we could opt for the very best
The protagonists of A Farewell to Arms are attractive enough (nay, more than that), but let me spend more – at least four thousand of those lives – in the company of the women and men from A dance to The Music of Time by Anthony Powell, to give one example
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”
The King Reader and Flow
9 out of 10
My favorite Hemingway novel would have been The Sun Also Rises https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/20... only somehow, I have read it twice, and on the last encounter it failed to enchant this reader, surely for subjective reasons
It clearly has a lot (or all of it) to do with reading about Ernest Hemingway, and other great minds, such as Leo Tolstoy, Henrik Ibsen and especially Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the latter has abandoned his children at the door of an orphanage, at a time when nine of ten would die in such conditions, and it was a chilling finding
Intellectuals https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/06/... by Paul Johnson does a lot to change the mindset of readers, it did it for me, notwithstanding the fact that I was not a great fan of Hemingway to start with, however impressive, emotional the story of The Old Man fighting the elements is
A Farewell to Arms is a love story, and a good one at that, this note is not meant to dispute the magnificence of this, or any other major work, it is all a question of what this subjective reader has taken out of it – ‘there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’ Hamlet – or could not bring with him, when the book is finished
There are ten essential elements of positivity: awe, interest, hope, joy, amusement, inspiration, pride, serenity, gratitude and above all, love, this is what the ultimate expert has discovered and you find it in her classic book, Positivity https://realini.blogspot.com/2015/05/...
It is intriguing to read about the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Scott F. Fitzgerald – for some critics, the author of The Greatest Book of the last century, and certainly one of the best of all time The Great Gatsby https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/09/... a masterpiece, indeed
‘Hemingway’s claim that he took a look at Fitzgerald’s member in le water, the men’s room, is treated with an odd informality given the intimacy of the act…’ there have been suggestions that there was a ‘homosexual tension in the atmosphere between the two fabulous writers’, who had very different styles…
Reading is not for business, I do not have a duty, ergo it must be for pleasure and then we have some formulas to see if one book fits the bill, say PERMA https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/... proposed by Martin Seligman, co-founder of positive psychology, where
P is for Positive Emotions, E for Engagement, R aka Relationships, M is for Meaning and A for Achievement, I will focus on Flow and the need for a novel to bring some sort of trance, higher state of consciousness, if not Nirvana – sometimes I feel that Flow and Nirvana are not exactly near each other, perhaps even opposite
The conditions for Flow are explained in Flow https://realini.blogspot.com/2016/10/... and they are - nothing else matters, it is an autotelic experience aka it provides enchantment, you are in control, there is constant and instant feedback, and finally, two most important here:
Challenges meet expectations or you are on the line between boredom and burnout, and time is relative, and in a good way I would add, taking the former, and trying to apply it to books, there are times when I see that I am not exactly thrilled by what happens in the book, or else, it is too much, impossible to comprehend
Alternating between tedium and overwhelming situations is not auspicious – the desert was formed when temperatures were extremely low at night, and very high at daytime – and in what regards time, the experiences can be magnificent, and then you feel you fly very fast with the narrative, and alternatively:
You get so much feeling, thought provoking material that it is also a time that sometimes feels as if you had a life spent with those marvelous characters…granted, when you expect so much, you may feel disappointed – the problem of having too high expectations of being what was called the Maximizer in another psychology classic
The Paradox of Choice https://realini.blogspot.com/2015/07/... offers two types of humans, the Satisfizer and Maximizer, the former is happy with the very good, while the latter is always morose, because he wants perfection, he wants the Panglossian world, with ideals coming true
Then there are some other criteria, from Schopenhauer and his interdiction for bad books, to the quote of Umberto Eco – the reader has five thousand lives, eternity backwards – to which I add, surely, but we do not want to live perpetually with personages we do not like, or amending even this, we could opt for the very best
The protagonists of A Farewell to Arms are attractive enough (nay, more than that), but let me spend more – at least four thousand of those lives – in the company of the women and men from A dance to The Music of Time by Anthony Powell, to give one example
Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/u... – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se
There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know
As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/r...
Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works
‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’
“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”
June 20, 2013
Reading Hemingway is always a good idea. There's just a certain deliciousness to his work that you won't find anywhere else, ever. Having said that, it's also a bit disappointing to come to the end of a tale like For Whom the Bell Tolls and experience the stop, which is nothing like an ending. The story simply stops. It's probably the most potent irritant quality of the postmodern class of artists. It was cutting edge, even cool, probably, when it was first published but now it's become a cliche of itself. I enjoyed the unfolding of the story and the complexity of the characters, but I didn't enjoy the non-ends of his tales. So I give it four stars, but I feel like giving it three.
September 12, 2015
Most people sayn this is Hemingway's materpiece. Actually, even Hemingway said that. I disagree. I did like this one, but being that I am now on book 8 by Hemingway I can say with full confidence that it is not his masterpiece. That being said, it is good. The imagery is beautfiul and almost calming. I swear you can hear the waves moving along the boat from time to time. It is also impossible to not feel bad for the old man at the end. This is a quick read, so for those of you working on the 100 list also, it is not a hard one to cross off.
March 27, 2008
I enjoyed the story, but found it incredibly sad. The old man and the boy had a special relationship. Although the village gave up on the man, the boy never did. One day, the man's luck changed, and he caught the biggest fish, but fish was eaten by the sharks.
October 6, 2008
So far, I can't believe I fought reading this for so long. I want to sit on a porch and drink whiskey and watch the sun to the sound of wind in tall grass all day whenever reading this. Its so good I don't want to finish.
March 30, 2010
I actually only read "The Old Man and The Sea" this time (but that book was not an option on the list for some reason). I have read all the others, so thought it was the best compromise Gripping yarn, btw.
July 19, 2010
Bought this edition when it was on sale as a twofer. I read all four novels in about a week last summer. My favorite was a tie between For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Old Man and the Sea. The pages are very thin. I tore some pages on accident.
November 8, 2010
I've read most oh Hemingway's books in the past but it's been like 20 years so I thought given how cheap this was I'd read them again!
July 27, 2011
I enjoyed this a great deal. The old man's relationship with the young boy, the ocean, the fish, the birds, the sea, age.
April 22, 2020
Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea shows a writer how to make the reader care for the protagonist. Hemmingway gives his protagonist a generous spirit.
Santiago is the old fisherman. He has taught Manolin, “the boy” in the story, how to be a fisherman. The love between these two characters, like grandfather to grandson, permeates the story. But Santiago is also passing down his fisherman trade to the next generation. Manolin appreciates this and loves the Old Man because of it.
We are inside the mind of Santiago on his journey to break his bad luck and catch a big fish. Like many people on a lonely journey, Santiago fills his thoughts with past life events and regrets, with present challenges to catch and hold the giant marlin through sheer strength and intelligence. The old man remembers his love for the sea, the fish, and his friends—especially the boy. Manolin signifies hope in life in this story, even in the life of an old fisherman.
Santiago is the old fisherman. He has taught Manolin, “the boy” in the story, how to be a fisherman. The love between these two characters, like grandfather to grandson, permeates the story. But Santiago is also passing down his fisherman trade to the next generation. Manolin appreciates this and loves the Old Man because of it.
We are inside the mind of Santiago on his journey to break his bad luck and catch a big fish. Like many people on a lonely journey, Santiago fills his thoughts with past life events and regrets, with present challenges to catch and hold the giant marlin through sheer strength and intelligence. The old man remembers his love for the sea, the fish, and his friends—especially the boy. Manolin signifies hope in life in this story, even in the life of an old fisherman.
January 24, 2021
My sons and I read "The Old Man and the Sea" while on the sea, on a ferry headed to Martha's Vineyard in 2018. It was a magical experience. We finished it up while leaning against the side of the lighthouse in Edgartown. Even now years later I remember the description of the colorful fish, the swirling of it in its demise, the stories of love between two fish and a man and a boy who cared for him. I love the spare nature of Hemingway's writing. Brevity in words should never be mistaken for absence of feeling.
January 24, 2024
A solid collection of Hemingway novels. My copy is a little loose and not holding up super well, but its still a great deal for four great books. My order of preference is probably Old Man and the Sea, The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, then For Whom the Bells Toll.
June 14, 2020
Everyone should read this.
Read
October 31, 2025Reviews are on each individual story. Read 3 of the 4. Loved Old Man and the Sea. Two others were a struggle. Held off on For Whom The Bell Tolls.
March 11, 2014
These 4 stories ran the gamut with regard to writing style/likability. His sentences are either very clipped or 150 words long,like the one I counted in Farewell to Arms.The Sun Also Rises has lots of irritating dialogue,characters drifting in/out of view. My favorite (The Old Man & The Sea) was spare, sublime. I was there in that boat with him. A Farewell to Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls fell somewhere in between the two. Still, it's Hemingway, so recommend it. See which ones are your faves.
December 16, 2008
I have a love/hate relationship with Hemingway. My senior seminar in college was on him and I read SOOOOOO much Hemingway under the direction of Dr. Modlin. But I remember these stories so incredibly well that, thanks to Dr. Modlin, they must be etched into my soul. There must be something powerful about them.
Read
January 23, 2016I loved this book from the beginning until the end but I didn't like it just for one reason . All the book was treating the same thing , the same situations and it didn't show me something that I would be surprised for !
May 18, 2008
the only books that can make me cry (sort of)
December 3, 2008
Another all time fav...Hemingeway is a pleasure to read.
Want to read
April 29, 2009A collection of some of Hemingways great books. Couldn't resist the bargin. The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Old Man and the Sea.
July 14, 2009
I only read For Whom the Bell Tolls but this site didn't have it.
September 13, 2009
the only one I didn't read was for whom the bell tolls. i liked the other three. I had to read them for an english class.
September 26, 2012
Very deep,intense and very readable..Enjoyed much!!
December 8, 2012
Hemingway can bring you down. Gives you a little insight into why he was so depressed.
January 5, 2015
Old man and sea was good.
Farewell to arms was also good and so was For whom the bell tolls.
Sun also rises - was fairly ok.
Farewell to arms was also good and so was For whom the bell tolls.
Sun also rises - was fairly ok.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 33 reviews