The Sun Also Rises was my second book of the year and my first taste of Hemingway, a man and a name synonymous with heavy drinking, Nobel Prize winning, fist fighting and generally being hardcore. Interesting, perhaps, that the first novel by this machine of a man is one that could be loosely described as a romance.
Jake Barnes, an American expatriate in Europe, does indeed romanticise. He takes the same economical interest in the culture, the hills, his friends and alcohol as he does with recent divorcée Lady Brett Ashley, who seems intent on sticking her fingers in everyone's romantic pies - a source of pretty much all drama in the novel.
The thing about Hemingway's 'economic' style of writing is that it casts a very mechanical light over everything that occurs, feelings, drama, and people included. We hear all about the love other people feel for Lady Ashley, and we see the sometimes violent result of this bouncing around the friendship group like a bull in a china-shop (And oh are there a lot of bulls in this book) but we never hear of Jake's apparent love for her, which results in a rather detached narration by him.
The majority of the novel takes place in the picturesque countryside of Spain, and whilst there is much opportunity for wax lyricism, Jake talks about the setting like he talks about Lady Ashley - we know that they are both beautiful, but we can't really feel it. Many people have described it as beautiful, and so I feel as though it's only me who feels as though the book is equivalent to someone telling you over the phone that the room they are in is very hot - you have no reason to not believe them, but you're not exactly sweating.
That said, I did enjoy the book, but for slightly different reasons to how the blurb said I would. Hemingway, a journalist himself, doesn't make you fall in love with his characters as much as he documents them perfectly, taking a slice of the Lost Generation of the 1920's, a generation of rock-steady livers and battle scarred men loose living on a financial boom, and filing it away for future generations to look back upon.
That said, for lack of description, I did picture one of the characters - who is described only ever as a Jew - as Mort from Family Guy. This awkward pop-culture crossover genuinely made my experience of the book ten times better.
Pages: 216
Bottom Line: If Hemingway was a beer, you wouldn't get drunk on him, but everyone else would.
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