Customer Reviews (25) 
A good introduction to Hemingway...
This collection showcases some of Hemingway's best short stories, and serves as a fine introduction to his work. Between the opening "Snows of Kilimanjaro" and the closing "Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," the ten narratives offer a range of tales ranging from hunting, to drinking, to war, to hunting again. But despite the somewhat predictable nature of Hemingway's works, their economic and sometimes cryptic nature serves to disguise the poignant heartbreak of his characters. It might occasionally read as a broken set of separated stories rather than one cohesive whole (ala The Nick Adams Stories, another of his collections that focused more on creating a set of stories revolving around a central character), but Hemingway has never felt compelled to give a complete recollection of events. While the book fails in providing readers with the clear-cut resolution that they often desire, it also draws great success from telling just enough to evoke a sense of understanding. In the end, Hemingway is never about totality, and readers should have no expectations of such from "The Snows of Kilimanjaro." But what it lacks in the cohesion of it's narratives, it makes up for in consistency of quality. While this volume makes no pretension in being an in-depth study of the human psyche, it is at its fundamental level, a grouping of ten really good stories.
Left me cold
The Snows of Kilimanjaro has little to do with snow or Mount Kilimanjaro or Africa. The first short story serves as a pretext. An author and journalist is dying, and he regrets he didn't write more recollections of his early past. This is followed by fifteen or so tableaux of Michigan rural life (mostly). The pieces are dry and descriptive. They serve to show, not to explain, and barely follow any plots. Each is preceded by an unrelated journalistic snippet: on the 1920s evacuation of Smyrna, on bullfighting, on WWI Italy. This is self-referential, of course. The Snows of Kilimanjaro is at the border between short-story writing and journalism. This fits Hemingway's style. But whether it is interesting is another matter. I much preferred his novels, even if they too are fictionalised reporting, especially A Farwell To Arms and For Whom The Bell Tolls.
An Undercurrent of Demons
If you've read only a few of Hemingway's major works (as I had), this slim volume of ten short stories is a wonderful way to get a better sense of this literary lion's take on life and the demons (real or imagined) that populate the lives of his wounded characters - and the author himself.
On the plains of Africa, convalescing in Italy, at an outdoor cafe in the middle of the night or in Middle America, psychological scars abound,women can hem you in, men can give you nightmares, family can haunt you, and life can be cheap. Hemingway experienced first-hand the pathos of humanity in the theater of war and brings deeply felt emotions to the table in his trademark punchy, rat-a-tat-tat, sometimes nuts-to-you style. And all the while, he evokes the landscapes, smells, sounds and sky of his settings in a manner captured for posterity by the mind's eye.
The bookends of this collection - "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" - tell of men in a setting that demands courage who, in their own way, try to measure up to their self-expectations while making peace with their choice of mates, all while nature closes in on them. Each has a compelling conclusion (the reader of "Kilimanjaro" may miss what has really happened if skimming at a critical point), but it is "Kilimanjaro" that soars in its lofty evocation of the release of death. And its flashback stream-of-consciousness, a precursor of the kind of New Journalism ushered in during the Sixties by authors like Tom Wolfe, provides a stark counterpoint to the stillness of the African encampment.
This collection is a superior introduction to Hemingway and is strongly recommended.
With stories left untold . . .
Between the first story about dealing with life in the context of death and the last story about dealing with death in the context of life, the stories between the two in this anthology follow suit thematically. As a topical collection, The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories serves as a good overview of the more dreary side of Hemingway's standard subject matter: unspoken dissatisfaction, the absence of emotion in the midst of war, and decent men in the midst of bad lives.
In the title story, Harry turns into the expectation of death towards the end of his life after realizing that he, like us all, will die with stories untold. The monologue where he talks about saving the best stories for too long is surely one of the most terse and accurate statements on the creation of and co-existence with art. The oft-anthologized "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" retrogrades and shifts the viewpoint of the people who surround misery as opposed to misery itself. Of course, in fitting with the feel of the rest of the stories, there exists the inescapable unity within the brotherhood of melancholy.
"A Day's Wait" seems tossed of, and fails at the short form that "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place" succeeds with. The next story is the ridiculously-titled (and perhaps misplaced) "The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio," and even if the ending reveals too much with its final exchange of dialogue, the story is good and occasionally funny (on purpose, which is rare for Hemingway).
Two Nick Adams stories--the odd "Fathers and Sons" and the solid-yet-anticlimactic "The Killers"--are all right, but leave me wondering why he has become a reoccurring character in Hemingway's work. Between them is "In Another Country," where the style makes what is important either unsaid or trivialized, thereby perfecting the concept of a dead and unsettled center in the middle of a chaotic swirl of feelings. A third Nick Adams story ("A Way You'll Never Be") seemed like a poorly done "In Another Country." The collection closes with "Fifty Grand" and "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," two tales of realization and redemption. This is a very nice introduction to Hemingway's short fiction, with a little bit of sadness soot available for everyone.
Mediocre
I gave a brief try to Hemingway two or three years ago that didn't stick, though I don't remember the volume. Then, the other day, with full-on earnestness, I grabbed up this book. I thought it was pretty simple stuff. He seems to be write absolutely from the gut. Short sentences, bland sentences. Nothing that is deeply thoughtful or even conscious.
He is well-known as a macho writer who nonetheless delivered a genius to mass and critical audiences. But I'm not sure I understand how or why. I ought to try one on his famous novels before haranguing the icon, but there is almost no temptation after reading this collection.
I give him credit for conjuring up thick clouds of weird, dark emotion over seemingly fleeting events (one story in this collection, "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, does this particularly well), but the balance was a disappointment.
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