The Young Hemingway – Michael Reynolds

The Young Hemingway – Michael Reynolds – 1998

Posted by Lale, 2002.

There are over 70 Hemingway biographies out there. You want to read one, a good one. How do you choose? You flip through the pages of a few at your local bookstore, and then, relying on your intuition and luck, you pick one. Hopefully it will be the one written by Michael Reynolds. The Young Hemingway is the first in a 5 volume set. The other books in the set are The Paris Years, The Homecoming, The 1930s and The Final Years. (I ended up reading all 5. While reading this first book, it is important to keep in mind that it is only a part of a bigger story.)
This is a well-researched and well-written book (as are the other 4 in the series). Reynolds, to put everything into perspective, gives background information on the society, politics, art, culture and trends of the times. He tells us which songs are popular at the time, and which books are on the best-seller lists. All of the important events that take place in the US and in the world are mentioned. Reynolds does not miss anything that might have helped shape Hemingway or that might help us understand him and his works better. When a day is significant in Hem’s life, you can be sure that Reynolds will also tell you the headlines of European and American papers of that day.
It is a very smooth flowing, easy to read book and when you are finished you know that you can’t just have one, you have to read all five.
The first book, The Young Hemingway, is concentrating on the family to give us a solid background of the man, of where he is coming from. It is important to keep in mind that this is only one fifth of the whole study. The family falls into the background in the following books and other stories, other influences come to the foreground. It is a work that needs to be reviewed as a whole.