Across The River And Into The Trees

2.5 stars. Line to line this has some typical strong Hemingway writing, but as a whole it has none of what makes Hemingway's best works special. A disappointment.

Hmm, a bit spoilerish, sorry, so I hid some of this...
Set in Italy, near the end of World War II, it is the story of retiring Colonel Richard Cantwell. He visits a small town near Venice, where he meets his (very much) younger girlfriend, Renata. He is fifty one, she is nineteen. The Colonel is a somewhat brash and rude man, who falls into a ‘military' response too easily, but Hemingway examines his wanting to be less rude, and less confrontational.
His military career is over, and while he has his anecdotes and the past glories, he has little else, and his young girlfriend, who will not marry him is his only love. He works his way through his long weekend, putting things in order for his departure.
Hemingway builds and interesting character in The Colonel, not necessarily likeable, but perhaps when he is understood a bit more towards the end. There are a few interesting interactions, but for me the dialogue in some parts was pretty hard work, and some could have been omitted without effecting the closure of the story.
3 stars.

It's like a December-May version of the movie Before Sunrise. Except instead of Ethan Hawke, you have a bitter ex-General (now Colonel) in the US Army with some sort of terminal cardiac condition. And instead of Julie Delpy, you have a young, selfish, stupid/naive girl (or at least one who acts stupid and naive). The relationship between the two is so skeevy that you can imagine that some reviewer came up with the word just to describe this. Okay, so it's actually nothing like Before Sunrise in that it's very talky and the couple spends the time bouncing around a European city.

There's practically nothing redeeming about this novel – there are flashes of Hemingway's brilliance. Occasionally – very occasionally – the couple's dialogue is dynamite. The conversations the Colonel has with a portrait of the girl are almost completely superior and more interesting. You have sentences like

The Colonel breakfasted with the leisure of a fighter who has been clipped badly, hears four, and knows how to relax truly for five seconds more.

Seinfeld