SIMPLY BEAUTIFUL. After this novel, I would do anything to be able to have a coffee with Hemingway and his expatriates at the Closerie de Lillas cafe. The most astounding part is that this novel is TRUTH, maybe colored with nostalgia but are amazingly touching portraits of some of the greatest literary giants of the century. When I put the novel down, I felt like I KNEW Hemingway. There were so many times he would make me laugh out loud or sigh with regret! I've read a great deal of his more reknown novels, but this novel is tied for my favorite novel of his along with Farewell to Arms. It's inconcievable that such extraordinarily talented people collected in a few Parisian cafes in a few years, and they were all acquaintences. What an idea! His stories of F.Scott Fitzgerald were especially illuminating and hilarious, but my favorites were: Ford Madox Ford & the Devil's Disciple, Birth of a New School ( especially funny ), With Pascin at the Dome, & Ezra Pound and the Bel Esprit. Hemingway's wit and sarcasm are so real, they leap off the pages and he seems to be engaging you in conversation. This novel really opened up my eyes to my perspective of Hemingway, most of his novels are stories that are semi-autobiographical so we have to decipher truth from plot. There is no need to figure out what is Hemingway--because it is ALL Hemingway!