“An absorbing, beautifully and tenderingly absurd, heartbreaking narrative… a truly gripping story, told in lean, hard, athletic prose.”
NO MAJOR SPOILERS
Written in the 1920s, the author and his friends would be termed the “lost generation” and it does suit them. Personally, at least for me, I find Hemingway and his writing style, frankly overrated. The discourses between the characters are minimal and it’s not so much what they are saying but what they aren’t saying. They meet up, they drink to excess, they insult each other and have a row or two, they separate and travel back and forth from France to Spain.
The author gives us peaceful moments when his narrator Jake Barnes goes on a fishing trip or swims in the ocean to the excitement of bullfighting and a fiesta. They dance, they party and tell themselves what a swell time it’s been but was it? Was it ever enough for anyone in this group?
When I finish the book, I’m left with the feeling, What the hell was that all about? I thought the characters were superficial, the never ending cycle of day after day, night after night of trying to satisfy that lust for life which is a delusion at best. Perhaps one day, I will acquire a taste for Hemingway but today is not that day. I will however give it a high score because I realize what bothers me about this novel is what will make me think often of it.
Reviewed by:
Diana Long
Added 3rd April 2020
