The Old Man and the Sea

Ernest Hemmingway is a name that conjures up many things, a heavy drinking misogynist, philanderer, hunter extraordinaire big game, big fish, whatever your image of him it probably isn’t that he writes a really good book to read in bed.

He was and is one of the most celebrated American writers of the 20^th century, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature but our vision has been blurred by the myth and legend surrounding this larger than life character.

And so it was with all this in mind that the challenge was undertaken to see what all the fuss was really about and take the plunge with a Hemingway book. The Old Man and The Sea was chosen because it seemed manageable, one hundred pages long, a good place to start. This book won the Pulitzer Prize and was described by Hemingway as “the best I can write ever for all of my life”

What a beautiful mesmerising book, so simple and yet keeps you turning the pages with the power of the writing. It is literally just about an old man and the sea, he doesn’t go on an epic journey but his story becomes epic. It is tinged with sadness but I knew it was a great book when I felt the melancholy at the end that I was leaving the world that Hemmingway had painted in words.