A Moveable Feast is a memoir from a young Ernest Hemingway’s pen.

It was recommended to me by an online writer’s masterclass I attended in January 2020. I need to add that I have never read any of Mr Hemingway’s books though I know him through the many quotes that frequent the writer’s world. I have learned to have respect for what he had achieved and the legacy he had left behind. So, I went in with great expectation but… there is always a but, correct.

My expectation quickly turned to confusion. Since I had done the writer’s masterclass in January, I cannot remember why it was recommended. It could be that we talked about memoirs and how to write it…  

Maybe it has to do with the time difference, though I love a beautifully written historical. So, it cannot be the reason. On the plus side, Paris became alive through his telling and though he considered himself poor his life was not poor. Just imagine sitting at a café while you enjoy a glass of wine with equally skilled writers and poets; it would be a dream come true. Today we don’t have the privilege to mix with other writers like he did.

With that said, here are the things I didn’t like.

Too clunky, too many sticky words and too long sentences. Writing from then to now definitely had changed.

Then all the throat clearing. Pages of dialogue-soaked throat-clearing that you skip just to get to what he tries to say. In the end, I stopped with the book and thought if he could write and become famous, I can as well.

Did my respect for the older writers diminish? No, it didn’t. If not for them we would not have the writer’s community, we have today. They laid the foundation for us and for that they deserve our admiration.

The book will leave you with a mixture of admiration, awe, and confusion but it is still worth the time. Even if just for what you can learn from it.

“Ezra was the most generous writer I have ever known and the most disinterested. He helped poets, painters, sculptors and prose writers that he believed in and he would help anyone whether he believed in them or not if they were in trouble. He worried about everyone and in the time when I first knew him he was most worried about T. S. Eliot who, Ezra told me, had to work in a bank in London and so had insufficient time and bad hours to function as a poet.”
Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast

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Excerpt A Strange Enough Ending

The way it ended with Gertrude Stein was strange enough. We had become very good friends and I had done a number of practical things for her such as getting her long book started as a serial with Ford and helping type the manuscript and reading her proof and we were getting to be better friends than I could ever wish to be. There is not much future in men being friends with great women although it can be pleasant enough before it gets better or worse, and there is usually even less future with truly ambitious women writers. One time when I gave the excuse for not having stopped in at 27 rue de Fleurus for some time that I did not know whether Miss Stein would be at home, she said, “But Hemingway, you have the run of the place. Don’t you know that? I mean it truly. Come in any time and the maidservant”—she used her name but I have forgotten it—“will look after you and you must make yourself at home until I come.” I did not abuse this but sometimes I would stop in and the maidservant would give me a drink and I would look at the pictures and if Miss Stein did not turn up I would thank the maidservant and leave a message and go away. Miss Stein and a companion were getting ready to go south in Miss Stein’s car and on this day Miss Stein had asked me to come by in the forenoon to say good-by. She had asked us to come and visit, Hadley and I staying at an hotel, but Hadley and I had other plans and other places where we wanted to go. Naturally you say nothing about this, but you can still hope to go and then it is impossible. I knew a little about the system of not visiting people. I had to learn it. Much later Picasso told me that he always promised the rich to come when they asked him because it made them so happy and then something would happen and he would be unable to appear. But that had nothing to do with Miss Stein and he said it about other people.

It was a lovely spring day and I walked down from the Place de l’Observatoire through the little Luxembourg. The horse-chestnut trees were in blossom and there were many children playing on the graveled walks with their nurses sitting on the benches, and I saw wood pigeons in the trees and heard others that I could not see. The maidservant opened the door before I rang and told me to come in and to wait. Miss Stein would be down at any moment. It was before noon but the maidservant poured me a glass of eau-de-vie, put it in my hand and winked happily. The colorless alcohol felt good on my tongue and it was still in my mouth when I heard someone speaking to Miss Stein as I had never heard one person speak to another; never, anywhere, ever. Then Miss Stein’s voice came pleading and begging, saying, “Don’t, pussy. Don’t. Don’t, please don’t. I’ll do anything, pussy, but please don’t do it. Please don’t. Please don’t, pussy.” I swallowed the drink and put the glass down on the table and started for the door. The maidservant shook her finger at me and whispered, “Don’t go. She’ll be right down.” “I have to go,” I said and tried not to hear any more as I left but it was still going on and the only way I could not hear it was to be gone. It was bad to hear and the answers were worse. In the courtyard I said to the maidservant, “Please say I came to the courtyard and met you. That I could not wait because a friend is sick. Say bon voyage for me. I will write.” “C’est entendu, Monsieur. What a shame you cannot wait.” “Yes,” I said. “What a shame.” That was the way it finished for me, stupidly enough, although I still did the small jobs, made the necessary appearances, brought people that were asked for and waited dismissal with most of the other men friends when that epoch came and the new friends moved in. It was sad to see new worthless pictures hung in with the great pictures but it made no difference any more. Not to me it didn’t. She quarreled with nearly all of us that were fond of her except Juan Gris and she couldn’t quarrel with him because he was dead. I am not sure that he would have cared because he was past caring and it showed in his paintings. Finally she even quarreled with the new friends but none of us followed it any more. She got to look like a Roman emperor and that was fine if you liked your women to look like Roman emperors. But Picasso had painted her, and I could remember her when she looked like a woman from Friuli. In the end everyone, or not quite everyone, made friends again in order not to be stuffy or righteous. I did too. But I could never make friends again truly, neither in my heart nor in my head. When you cannot make friends any more in your head is the worst. But it was more complicated than that.

Hemingway, Ernest. A Moveable Feast

Sin and Zen by S.W. Stribling

WILL STRIEF is an American in the French Foreign Legion who was recently injured in a bad parachute jump and recovering at a Legion retreat in the South of France: Marseille. After a few months of adjusting to a slower lifestyle, he meets a very strong and independent woman, CLAUDIA, who doesn’t seem impressed by him, nor does she pity him as the lost boy he really is.

The first time they really go out, they end up making love in the bottom of an empty bathtub. This sexual relationship remains a secret  amongst mutual friends for nearly a month before it is revealed that CLAUDIA is somewhat of a femme fatale with the men she has been with and has a long-term boyfriend back in her home country, Romania. This revealing information leads to the beginning of an off-and-on relationship between WILL and CLAUDIA dancing around the ideas of love, trust, and friendship.

The two later have an early pregnancy scare that brings their relationship from just sex to something more intimate. As time moves forward, WILL convinces CLAUDIA to become exclusive, but with her still maintaining the indifferent attitude to the whole idea of a traditional relationship which causes internal conflict for the younger and less experienced WILL.

As their relationship continues, WILL is also forced to deal with his career in the French Foreign Legion and his future in general. By the end of the first year together, the two seem fairly stable and WILL is medically discharged from the Legion. Being discharged, CLAUDIA and he move in together, further solidifying their relationship but maintaining the constant air of confusion as to how truly committed they are to each other and the rules of the game they are playing.

The second year that they spend together adds little clarification as the two oscillate between one loving, while the other is running. WILL seeing he has everything and nothing in life decides to take a trip to get away from it all. He flies out to India for some time alone. Traveling and completing a Vipassana course.

At first, it seems difficult for WILL to handle the idea of losing CLAUDIA. He questions life and the meaning of love. It seems he is haunted in both his dreams and waking moments. Yet, it is on his journey, both time alone and meeting new people, places, and cultures, that he gets in touch with his true self. A self that feels connected to his childhood, to his current reality, and to his unknown future.

It is a connection that holds no ill-will but seems to enlighten what just is, and what should be no more. After the Vipassana course and his one month trek in Nepal, he becomes truly at peace with whatever may or may not await him at home.

WILL comes back to the ‘real world’ and it seems that all is well between CLAUDIA and him. But this fantasy is short-lived, as the new year begins with a final surgery for WILL that leaves him bedridden as he watches CLAUDIA walk out on him.

CLAUDIA and WILL continue to sleep together despite the breakup and seeing other people at the same time. During that time, CLAUDIA reveals a letter she had written before his trip to India and had hidden inside one of WILL’s books. After reading the letter, WILL  reflects on all that passed between them and feels closure on his relationship with CLAUDIA.

Despite the seemingly calm end of this part of life, he goes through a transitional phase of heavy drinking, drug abuse, one-night stands, and desperate attempts at finding love. It is in this time, that he tries to find the balance between the mystical experience that was Nepal and the merciless and unforgiving world of scared, selfish humans, all just trying to get by however they can. This attempt at finding balance leaves WILL feeling pulled in two very different directions and with nothing to hold on to that leads to a depression that nearly takes his life.

Eventually, he starts to recover and find peace again in steady work and a new chance at love. The story ends with WILL still as confused as ever about what he wants from life and what is the right path for him. It ironically closes with a phone call from CLAUDIA.

Being a former Airman, Legionnaire, and English teacher, I have spent just as much time creating stories as I have spent writing them. This first novel is loosely based on my own personal experience with enough liberty taken to call it contemporary fiction. Having always had writing in my life as a form of therapy and being the broken soldier that I am, I have fully committed to what I believe to be my role in this play of life, a writer.

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Matt stayed. I felt him leaning in that direction from the dinner the night before. I wasn’t feeling that much better, but I just didn’t want to stay in the same place for that long when we were only halfway up climbing up the hill. This lake I had only heard of also enchanted me. It seemed more worthy to see, to achieve than just walking over a mountain pass. 

I packed my bags planning to head out on my own. I was disheartened by leaving my pleasant company, but something drew me much more than companionship. As I was waiting downstairs to say goodbye to Matt, Cathy came down packed and said she was coming with me. I could see almost a pang of lost love in Matt’s eyes. 

Not a romantic love, but a loss of something that didn’t see the end he had envisioned and hoped for. He made a few ‘Are you sure?’ attempts to ask her to stay, and I could see the discomfort in her to tell him ‘Yes.’ 

They had been together since they met on a website to meet fellow trekkers in Kathmandu. They had each come on their own, but came together almost immediately and just as quickly made their plans together. It was nice to see people come together like that and I was glad to have been a part of it, even in a spontaneous, add-on sense. 

I felt guilty too, since it was Matt that invited me along and had me join his team, and now I was splitting it apart. Matt would leave the next day to continue on the path to the pass, which would put him ahead of us. We spoke hopefully and optimistically about crossing the pass together and how he might wait for us at one of the base camps for such a reason. Though it was no promise, and none of us assumed it was such. 

We said ‘See you soon,’ but we meant, ‘Goodbye.’ Cathy and I left. It would be a full day getting there. Longer than any day we had had so far. Up to this point of the trek, we had only walked about five hours a day with breaks in between, sometimes frequent and sometimes long. It made a day, a short day, but a day. I felt confident with my drive and her steadiness. I imagined getting there, running up the mountain, and then getting back on track without a loss of breath or time. I felt that way until the first two hours were over. Up and down and up and down. Was it left or right here? Was this even a trail? My motivation became a desire just to get to the base camp before it snowed too heavily.

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There were two villages we passed along the way that provided a place to stay for people making the trek, but the steady tortoise won the race. ‘Good to go?’ I would ask. 

A smile and ‘Yep.’ The trail was windy, cold, and the last leg of it involved walking across a landslide area. Considering that there was not even enough trail to put one foot, I wondered how the villagers brought large cattle or supplies through here. 

I kept imagining one little rock turning into an all out landslide as we walked across it. The entire mountainside was nothing but small rocks. Forty-five minutes of leaning against these small rocks so as not to be blown off the inch-wide trail by the extreme wind and gusts, I looked down and envisioned the fall quite a lot. It would be one hell of a slide. One hell of a ride. We made it. 

We arrived at Tilicho base camp, got our shack, and then headed to the common area where we found Friedrich and Aviva. The common area was like many other places we stayed at. It was a large room with a kitchen in the back. It was the only room with a stove to heat the area and it is where everybody who stayed there would stay until it was time to go back out to their rented shack and sleep in their sleeping bags. 

There were people scattered around the open space, some at tables reading, some at tables eating, and some at tables drinking tea and staring at the larger concentration of people near the front of the room. This is where we found Friedrich and Aviva. There were probably a dozen people in this little circle. Friedrich was under the weather. They had just finished their climb to Tilicho Lake that day and already come back down. 

Friedrich was now feeling the wrath of Acute Mountain Sickness. I believed his story. He didn’t seem the type to use it as an excuse. He had himself curled up on the floor with a jacket over his head. It seemed mostly like a headache, but he couldn’t eat and was having some nausea. I believed more than anything his ears were the worst of it. He was happy to see us, but hid under his jacket most of the evening before finally heading to bed.

Book Review Living in the Middle by A Robert Allen. Based on true events.

This is the fourth book in the series, The Slavery and Beyond Series.

Based on true events, the story swept me away into the lives of Jimmy Montgomery III and the choices he had to make as an eighteen-year-old.  On the brink of a new life, he faced a devastating truth about himself, a truth that was sending him on a different path from what he had planned.

During this turmoil, he faced life-threatening situations while figuring out who he truly was. He could no longer hide his race and took a bold step. That boldness, however, almost cost him more than his life.

Tulsa, Oklahoma was a boiling pot in 1921. Though Greenwood flourished financially they were always seen as Darkeys who were bad. There were quite a few incidents that let to hostility between whites and blacks and Jimmy's appearance was the final straw.

A tormenting story of cruelty, misunderstanding and greed on both sides of the tracks. Jimmy and his friends had to find the middle ground as well.

The book's honest narrative points out the suspenseful time in a very quick flow dialogue as you go deeper within the plot.

The author's account really emphasized the nature of every person involved.

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 Rejected by his race. Hunted by the Klan. Yet, standing up to hatred is still the only choice.

New York, Early 1900s: Jimmy Montgomery comes from old New York money and grows up among the Manhattan elite. At the age of eighteen, Jimmy discovers he’s been living a lie. He follows his roots back to Tulsa, Oklahoma to answer the burning questions in his life. Who is he? What is he? Where does he belong? He finds love and friendship along the way, but full acceptance from either the White or the Black world eludes him. When trouble pits the White population of Tulsa against the Black community of Greenwood, Jimmy must finally make a choice---he can no longer live in the middle. His decision will alter the course of his life and those he’d come to love. What will he decide? Pick up a copy to find out.
LIVING IN THE MIDDLE is a powerful African American historical novel based on the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. If you like passionate heroes, no-holds-barred history, high-stakes emotional tension, then you’ll love A. Robert Allen’s eye-opening story.

LIVING IN THE MIDDLE is a stand-alone story connected by the theme to the other volumes in A. Robert Allen’s Slavery and Beyond series. 

 

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Book recommendations : Something for every reader that loves a good book.

At times, circumstances force a person to make decisions, just to be safe or survive. After a fort massacre, a small group of people found them in that exact place. Either they comply with the half-breed's wishes or die. Simple enough but when a woman is used as a bargaining chip for their safety then consequences will follow. Afterwards, those choices become burdens, even scorn when normality returns. 

A heartfelt story with so many twists that your empathy for the main character strengthened through the storyline. 

The first book laid the foundation for all three the books within the boxset, and I thoroughly enjoyed this suspense-filled/ adventurous stories when Louisiana was still in its infant shoes. The characters were realistic as they each found their place. 

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The elegant writing within this book was just a joy to read. The easy and orderly fashion allowed each word to flow with a rhythmic pace, keeping you glued to the story.

And what a story. It is unique and from a different point of view without the violence, one would expect with the topic. But subtle and empathic as the author takes you into the mind of an abused child from the eyes of a grown-up.

Once I started with the book, I simply good not put it down.
This book has been on my Kindle for seven years, but once I finally got to it, I was mesmerized.
Thank you for the freebie, at the time. I am looking forward to more from this author.

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This was an amazing story with so much diversity that kept the suspenseful pace gripping for more, throughout the book. I will definitely buy the next books in the series.
This story really touched every aspect of betrayal and lies to the next level. The four main characters were very supportive as they had to grow in their own place. Each really touching another aspect of lies and change it to victory.
Though the writing was good, the repetitiveness got to me at times, and the reason I could not give it a 5-star rating.
Otherwise, a very good plot with great characters that made the story realistic and believable.
Thanks for the freebie back in 2012.

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Book review: My kind of Guy by Paddy Bostock. A witty political fantasy.

 

The publisher recommended this book to me, for an unbiased review. A story I thoroughly enjoyed.

The spy-ish fantasy plotline transported me to the political landscape which stretched across the board. In the typical tongue-in-the-cheek humour or sarcasm this author is well-known for. Through the quirky lines, you got to know Doctor Mervyn, his trusted Suzi, and Lizzie and her trusted Jurgen to be the spilling point of the spy-rescue-Leo story which took me from London to Munich with quick dashes into the White House and Downing street extravaganza. As I received in-depth descriptions of their way of thinking.  

It all spelt political nightmare, if not for the intervention of Jurgen, a fierce protector of Lizzie, and MI6 interceptive cunningness to protect information from the most notorious sort. Since Leo – the person who started the mess had some explaining to do while he had to face his own mistakes – which extend across the globe. Leaving many women in anger and disgust towards his type.

The ending was not what I expected but then I have learned to expect the unexpected from this author’s pen. His ability to joke with Britain and America, as always fun to read.

At times I found the throat-clearing a bit too much but mostly it gave extra flavour to the turmoil the rescuers found themselves in. It always added more spices to the normal salt-and-vinegar plot. As Mervyn, Suzi, Lizzie, Jurgen and Taya tried to save the day.

A book many readers of political suspense will enjoy, no doubt.

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Appointed by Lizzie Leah to locate her lost lover, whom she knows by the name of Leo McGuire, PI (and ex-spy) Mervyn Vincent discovers that the object of his quest is not only a gigolo with a harem of “Mrs McGuires” across the continents, but also a valuable player (real name Leon Devine) in an international right-wing cartel. Realizing that there’s more to Leon than meets the eye, Mervyn joins forces with his sister Taya, and Lizzie to reform the young man and channel his abilities into worthier causes, thereby impacting, albeit modestly, the global power machinery.