I absolutely love this book. I read this book when I was like 14 and I miraculously managed to finish it with enough positive feelings to know it was a good book, but I was still confused as to why it was regarded so highly. Well now that I’m nineteen I felt like I needed to revisit it, something that I rarely do with my books, and it turned out to be one of the best reading experiences ever.
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First off I understood how much depth is underneath the bare and simple sentences. How beautiful his description of the Basque country is, and the fishing trip with Bill was probably my favorite part of the book.
Most importantly I was able to understand the shadow that affects all the characters in this book, which is the war. It was insane for me to imagine how someone like Jake could exist in real life, going from bar to bar, from cafe to cafe, for what?
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Add to that Hemingway’s compelling introduction to bullfighting and his masterful storytelling of the relationship of the party at Pamplona, the amount of copium they do, just to hide how bad they actually feel is morbid. It’s weird to think that out of all of them, Cohn is probably the least broken one.
I really recommend this book if you’re interested in the Lost generation(the young people that went through ww1 and came back home) or have read books by Fitzgerald. It’s probably not what you will expect, it’s got no plot at all, and I love books and shows that are like that, you get to immerse yourself with the character and be on his shoes everyday, accompany him when he buys the train ticket, see the mountains pass when you’re in the train, what’s better than that?
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I decided to write this post because honestly noone I know would like this type of book, there’s so much more than I can say but this is just a quick post. By the way I’ve only read this one and The old man and the sea, Do you guys reckon this is the best Hemingway?
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Edit: I think every new book I read is the best book of all time.
by FantasticAd7970