To Have and Have Not
Books | Fiction / Classics
3.7
(72)
Ernest Hemingway
To Have and Have Not is the dramatic, brutal story of Harry Morgan, an honest boat owner who is forced into running contraband between Cuba and Key West as a means of keeping his crumbling family financially afloat. His adventures lead him into the world of the wealthy and dissipated yachtsmen who swarm the region, and involve him in a strange and unlikely love affair. In this harshly realistic, yet oddly tender and wise novel, Hemingway perceptively delineates the personal struggles of both the “haves” and the “have nots” and creates one of the most subtle and moving portraits of a love affair in his oeuvre. In turn funny and tragic, lively and poetic, remarkable in its emotional impact, To Have and Have Not takes literary high adventure to a new level. As the Times Literary Supplement observed, “Hemingway's gift for dialogue, for effective understatement, and for communicating such emotions the tough allow themselves, has never been more conspicuous.”
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Author
Ernest Hemingway
Pages
175
Publisher
Simon and Schuster
Published Date
2014-05-22
ISBN
1476770220 9781476770222
Community ReviewsSee all
"Review cross-posted from <a href="https://books.max-nova.com/to-have-and-have-not">https://books.max-nova.com/to-have-and-have-not</a><br/><br/>Coming off of Dodie Smith's "I Capture the Castle," I decided that I needed a real manly book. So of course, I turned to Hemingway! I had come across one of those ridiculous listicles that proclaimed to have identified the most famous book that takes place in each state. Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not" was the selection for Florida. Checked out the description of the book - boats, Cuban rebels, smuggling off the Florida Keys, I'm in! A nice complement for my 2018 theme of "Crime and Punishment".<br/><br/>I didn't realize what I was getting in to. Hemingway bounces wildly between a bunch of different perspectives and somehow covers an enormous number of ideas in just 180 pages. Race relations, socialism, rebellion, crime, sex, greed, wealth, laziness, family life, gender roles, violence, nature, work, power, etc. The dialogue is spartan but startlingly evocative - there are even a few bitter laughs in here. Hemingway is a master, but I didn't enjoy this book. His view of life is too gritty, too cynical, and too bleak (I was even reminded of Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle"). "To Have and Have Not" punched me in the stomach and left me empty and sad."
Max Nova
"I was really surprised by this book. I have read Hemingway in the past, but nothing like this. If this had been written by Ernest Jones rather than Ernest Hemingway I don't think it would have been published. The book was so disjointed, there were parts that I don't even think were meant to go with this story. It was like the pages blew off the table and someone put them together in a random order. Let's just say I was happy to finish this book and move on to another book in my TBR challenge."
L D
Lisa Dunn