Product Description

The War is just over. In Venice, a city elaborately and affectionately described, the American Colonel, Richard Cantrell, falls passionately in love with Renata, a young Italian countess who has 'a profile that could break your or anyone else's heart'. Cantrell is embittered, war-scarred and old enough to be Renata's father, but he is overwhelmed by the selflessness and freshness of the love she is offering. But this is no fairy tale. The fighting may be ended, but the wounds of war have not yet healed. And for some, the longed-for peace has come too late.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55017 in Books
• Published on: 1994-11-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Ernest Miller Hemingway was born in Chicago in 1899 as the son of a doctor and the second of six children. After a stint as an ambulance driver at the Italian front, Hemingway came home to America in 1919, only to return to the battlefield - this time as a reporter on the Greco-Turkish war - in 1922. Resigning from journalism to focus on his writing instead, he moved to Paris where he renewed his earlier friendship with fellow American expatriates such as Ezra Pound and Gertrude Stein. Through the years, Hemingway travelled widely and wrote avidly, becoming an internationally recognized literary master of his craft. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954, following the publication of The Old Man and the Sea. He died in 1961.

Customer Reviews

A surprising love story from 'macho' Hemingway
One of the greatest love stories I've ever read - and I've read a lot. First read as an impressionable teenager, this book still moves me now (several decades later). As always with Hemingway, beautifully crafted simplicity. Read this and weep.

Very disappointing
I'd say Hemingway is my favourite writer of all (For Whom The Bell Tolls is my favourite novel) - but this is far from one of his best.

Endless whimsical passages about his young love, an unsympathetic and (to my mind) unlikable protagonist, a somewhat unlikely premise and an almost non-existent plot all made this a hard slog for me.

Far be it for me to criticise Hemingway's writing, but after a while this felt extravagantly self-absorbed and while that may have been therapeutic at the time, it left me wishing for the end.

I'd place this low down on a list of his must-read books. With so much great writing to compete with I wouldn't recommend this except for the Hemingway die-hard fan / student. Sorry!

Transfers you instantly to Venice
It is miraculous how Hemingway manages to trigger ones imagination with such a simplistic choice of words. From page one onwards one IS in Venice, one IS the colonel and one IS hunting ducks in the cold, crispy morning air. And Hemingway was able to resist stretching the story into one of these 600 page-never-ending-chewing-gum-like books. One is surprised when it's already the last page ... and that's how it should be.