Winner Take Nothing

Despite considering myself a staunch Hemingway fan for a few years now, I've still never been entirely sold on his short stories. Winner Take Nothing came closest for me to opening my eyes to the merits of this part of his writing career. There were still a couple of duds, and the collection as a whole ran out of steam before the end (the best ones are at the start of the book), but the writing is as clean and precise as ever. It also contains the best Hemingway short story I've yet read: 'The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber.' I really liked some of the other stories – particularly 'The Capital of the World', 'After the Storm' and 'A Natural History of the Dead' – but the Macomber story was flawless, a story that epitomises all show more the praise which I've often heard Hemingway receive for his short stories but never really personally identified before. I may still not appreciate his short stories as much as I do his novels but Winner Take Nothing, and the Macomber story in particular, has helped me a great deal in getting there. show less

My third and final collection of Hemingway short stories.

Favorites include of course A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, A Way You’ll Never Be, The Gambler The Nun and The Radio, Fathers and Sons, and A Natural History of the Dead.

I'll be honest, bingeing on Hemingway is hard. If all you are eating are nouns and verbs you start to crave adjectives, adverbs and complex interior monologues. With Hemingway, it's often what is not written but merely suggested that is the real story. The stuff left out.

I'm a Hemingway fan, but that doesn't mean I like everything he's done, nor all the topics he chose to write about. Nevertheless there is no denying his power as a writer. This story collection dates to 1933 and includes one of his most famous short works, "A Clean Well-lighted Place" as well as what I consider to be one of his very finest and most memorable short stories, the opener "The Short Happy Life of Frances Macomber."

In all there are 17 short stories in this collection and several to me were very minor things which keeps me from rating this book higher. Anyone who is interested in Hemingway should read this however for the better stories and to see his breadth as a writer. There is some powerful stuff in here.

A veried collection of Hemingway stories, it is a strong group punctuated by the absolutely brilliant 'A Clean Well-Lighted Place' which is arguably his best story ever.

ex-Library