Steph's Little Library: Book Reviews: 'The Sun Also Rises' and 'A Farewell to Arms' by Ernest Hemingway

Both novels are on the Modern Library's '100 Best Novels' lists, but I read them for a different reason:

The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

The Books: The Sun Also Rises follows Jake Barnes and his fellow ex-patriots as they travel from Paris to Pamplona for the bullfighting fiesta, stopping in hotels and cafes along the way, and also doing a little fishing. There is tension among friends as they drink, fight, and love their way through the post-WW1 years, encapsulating the impulsive, aimless spirit of the Lost Generation. A Farewell to Arms, a semi-autobiographical novel about an American volunteer ambulance driver tangled up in 'the war to end all wars', weaves wartime narratives with idyllic foreign romance as 'Tenente' Henry creates a new life with nurse Catherine Barkley amidst the senseless conflict on the Continent.

The Reviews: I had picked these two up from the library in anticipation of reading Paula McLain's The Paris Wife, which won the GoodReads best historical fiction award for 2011 - The Sun Also Rises was written around the time that McLain covers in her novel, and I thought it'd be a good idea to read the source material first. (A Farewell to Arms seemed like a obligatory read.) My only other experiences with Hemingway were reading The Old Man and the Sea when I was 14 and not really getting it (understandable I would hope), and watching Michael Palin's documentary not long afterward when I was on a Monty Python kick.

I didn't mind The Sun Also Rises - it's hard to come away from a book like that (and Farewell too) and not think of it as being very romantic, experiencing a nostalgia for a life not lived, because it may not have been the intention to write something like that. Jake and his madcap friends cavort around Paris and Pamplona in such an unrestricted, carefree way, and nothing really much matters to them, and if it does it's not really a big deal and if it causes fights then a few fists are thrown and then they all get drunk and say sorry and then it's fine. Hemingway's famously understated prose promotes this laissez-faire activity to flow almost uninterrupted so that the events in the narrative just happen, much how life just passes by, only the lives of this particular group of people is so much more interesting than mine. However, that's just about the problem I had with this novel - things happens, and that's about it. I understand that the understated prose is like the notes you don't play, and at points in the novel, usually when Jake and Brett were alone and musing about their past together, the missing exposition made the exchange between them more interesting and provocative, but I don't know if there was enough of it to keep me really in the story - I wanted to know more about what Jake and Brett had in the war, and about Jake's injury, etc., but because nothing is ever revealed, nothing is ever explained or delved into, which is a little disappointing. The lack of this kind of subtextual substance in The Sun Also Rises means that it's a fun read, but like The House of Leaves (albeit in a very different way), I finished it without feeling like I'd really brought anything away from it, other than a strong urge to go back to Spain.

A Farewell to Arms was much the same in regard to the way Hemingway wrote (or didn't write) the story, but perhaps because it's a longer novel there was more to it. It feels like there is more of a complete narrative in this novel, even if it is only boy-meets-girl, soldier-meets-nurse - the focus is always on Henry and how the war and his relationship with Catherine affect him and how he views his life. Things still just seem to happen in this novel, like the previous one, but unlike The Sun Also Rises, there is a sense of completion in the sequence of events, and it's easier to follow the story (probably because there is one). I loved the descriptions of the scenery and could easily imagine wartime Italy in the absence of flowery adjectives, and I think I liked it all the more because of that absence. The dialogue tended to drag on unnecessarily, though, especially between Henry and Catherine, it just about drives you crazy how mind-numbing the lovey-dovey is between them, and how pathetic Catherine is (in the context of now, obviously, not then, although...). When the repetitive, nonsensical nature of the dialogue is between men, and moreso in the warzones, it's very Catch-22, and not so bad, but it can still drag. The ending is dreadful too, but for a different reason, although in a way I thought it was fitting for the story to end the way it did. I preferred it to The Sun Also Rises, probably because it entertained me for longer, the story was more interesting, I felt there was a sense of something happening, something building, and I was still allowed to put some pieces of the puzzle together myself, free of overbearing exposition (my favourite thing about Hemingway I think). And Switzerland is definitely on the to-do too.

So despite the two lead female characters being horrendously embarrassing ditzes and the glamourisation of the dangerously high consumption of alcohol in both novels being the two big problems, along with the lack of a decent narrative in The Sun Also Rises, I come away from reading Hemingway's first two major works on the 'like' side of the fence. I look forward to getting stuck into The Paris Wife - hopefully she's not as airheaded as Catherine Barkley.

Out of Five:

The Sun Also Rises