The Stream

Product Information

An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale. This is such a sweet nostalgic book! It's very similar to the author's fictional memoir Lark Rise to Candleford but the story is tighter. I found it slow to begin as elderly Charity wandered through her old haunts and described every bit of scenery in minute detail. Once her childhood narrative began, I felt more connected to the stories. Flora Thompson was an amazing writer. The characters really come to life and I felt like I was there with elderly Charity watching her childhood go by in a series of memories. Charity herself isn't a well-drawn character but her cousins all have distinct personalities and plot lines of their own. I liked practical Bess, the mother of her siblings and the champion of the poor. I admired Charity for knowing what she wanted and going after it no matter what pressures she faced from her mother and her community. I felt every joy and sorrow the characters experienced and I was sad when the end came to tell the reader what happened to the characters after they grew up.

In part 3, “At Sea,” Hudson and his ragtag crew hunt down and kill the survivors of a sunken German submarine, on some uninhabited section of the Cuban coast, but not before Hudson himself is mortally wounded. “We didn’t do so good, did we?” Hudson concludes. Some of the word choices in the book are a bit difficult to understand, being colloquialisms but I enjoyed learning them and trying to figure out how to say them. It's part of the charm of the novel. All the local color really makes the story shine, much like Lucy Maud Montgomery's stories about Prince Edward Island. Early in 1950 Hemingway started work on a "sea trilogy", to consist of three sections: "The Sea When Young" (set in Bimini); "The Sea When Absent" (set in Havana); and "The Sea in Being" (set at sea). He also wrote an unpublished story, "Sea-Chase", which his wife and editor combined with the previous stories about the islands, renamed them as Islands in the Stream, which was published in 1970. [2] Plot [ edit ]

About Pitchup.com

Still Glides the Stream is set in the fictional Oxfordshire village of Restharrow during the period surrounding Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee of 1887. Our narrator, Miss Charity Finch, is a retired schoolmarm who has returned to the village of her youth. She shares the memories of her childhood years fondly and paints a vivid portrait of a vanishing way of life. Henry "Mike" Strater, an American painter, spent the summer with Hemingway fishing on Bimini in 1935. [3] He is shown in the adjacent picture standing next to what was believed to be a 1,000 pound marlin that had been half eaten by sharks while Strater landed the fish.

This book is gorgeous. The reader will be astonished at its beauty. I recommend this with a teakettle and a plate of buttered brown homemade bread with jam. Part 1- Bimini, we are introduced to painter, Tom Hudson, who lives on this island and his family and friends visit him. He has a routine he adheres by that helps him keep structure in his life. I loved this section which had describes his three sons and the differences in them. We learn about something in his life and his fondness for drinking. I cried at the end of this section and the beginnings of part 2. Ernest Hemingway was born in 1899. His father was a doctor and he was the second of six children. Their home was at Oak Park, a Chicago suburb. The first act, "Bimini", begins with an introduction to the character of Thomas Hudson, a typical Hemingway stoic male figure. Hudson is an American painter who finds tranquility on the island of Bimini, in the Bahamas, a far cry from his usual adventurous lifestyle. Hudson's strict routine of work is interrupted when his three sons arrive for the summer and is the setting for most of the act. Also introduced in this act is the character of Roger Davis, a writer, one of Hudson's oldest friends. Though similar to Hudson, by struggling with an unmentioned internal conflict, Davis seems to act as a more dynamic and outgoing image of Hudson's character. The act ends with Hudson receiving news of the death of his two youngest children soon after they leave the island. Martha Gellhorn served as third wife of Hemingway in 1940. When he met Mary Welsh in London during World War II, they separated; he presently witnessed at the Normandy landings and liberation of Paris.

Need Help?

Lots of books you are not reading, because you are reading this one right now, may be better - hell, some must be - but do not dwell on that. No, do not dwell on that, but read the good book you have, because you know it is good and is nothing to complain about. You've got a good book and it's a pleasure to read, and it's a damned sight better to read than it is to be one of the characters in the book.