Wednesday, April 29, 2009

What I Just Read: A Farewell to Arms

It's a terrible cover, but if you must.

I think the moral here is, you can not judge a man by his novella. Or maybe you can. I believe I enjoyed this book just as much as I enjoyed "The Old Man and the Sea". I left somewhat satisfied but at the same time confused as to what all the hype about Hemingway was about. Maybe I just didn't get it but nothing about A Farewell to Arms was that impressive. I mean I enjoyed it just fine, yes it has flashes of brilliance at points but only just that, flashes.

Hemingway writes well when there is something to write about, in this books it was the war. But he fails to link each well written section with another equally well written section, instead he falls into dialogue that is far from stimulating.

This mostly revolved around the dialogue between the main character and the lead female character; there is just no substance. They talk endlessly for pages upon pages and nothing comes of it, not even any character development. It got to the point where I would see a large block of dialogue between the two of them and I would simply skip over it. The worst part? Katy says all Hemingway women are the same, joy.

Oh and I hated the ending.

No comments:

Post a Comment