The old joke proves itself upon reading.Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?A (Hemingway): To die. In the rain.

I feel like awarding the great Hemingway only two stars has officially consigned me to the seventh circle of literary hell. But I must be honest. By this website's criteria two stars indicates that a book is "okay" - and to me that describes this work perfectly.Hemingway himself is undeniably gifted. I love his succinct style (though at times it degenerates to downright caveman-speak), his honest diction and his wonderful sense of humor. That being said, he gets away with utterly ignoring most r...

I just finished it, and I'm disappointed. And not only disappointed; I'm also bothered by it. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at Hemingway's one-dimensional, sexist portrayal of Catherine Barkley, having read much of his other work, but somehow I still am. Put simply, Catherine is a ridiculous figure, and it's no fault of her own. Hemingway gives her no opportunity to sound like anything more than a half-crazy, desperate, fawning caricature with no real desires or opinions of her own. How many

(Book 663 From 1001 books) - A Farewell to Arms, Ernest HemingwayA Farewell to Arms is a novel by Ernest Hemingway set during the Italian campaign of World War I. The book, published in 1929, The title is taken from a poem by 16th-century English dramatist George Peele. A Farewell to Arms is about a love affair between the expatriate American Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley against the backdrop of the First World War, cynical soldiers, fighting and the displacement of populations. The publi...

War is Boring Hemingway’s narrator writes not as a soldier but as a journalist-soldier, channeling Hemingway himself, recording with precision and apparent objectivity the things that happen around him and to him - practical and prosaic and always pragmatic about everything. People die and bombs explode in the same paragraph as the one where breakfast was considered with equal interest, and he takes it all in his stride.As best as I can tell, the action of A Farewell to Arms takes place from

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com:]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted here illegally.)The CCLaP 100: In which I read a hundred so-called "classics" for the first time, then write reports on whether or not they deserve the labelBook #17: A Farewell to Arms, by Ernest Hemingway (1929)The story in a nutshell:Published in the late 1920s, right when Modernism was first starting to become a...

Damn. That ending. Even whilst still dusting off the cover (it's been lying around for ages) I already knew it's finale. It's simply been impossible to ignore. Even cropping up in three or four films I have seen over the years. Knowing it is one thing, but actually reading it is quite another. So, the big question is - did this in anyway tarnish the novel for me? In a word, No. As once I truly got stuck into Hemingway's compulsive narrative all was forgotten. His presentation of war was just as

In the fall of that year we rented a house in the mountains that looked down across the river to the village below. The water of the river was turquoise and the village had a pretty campanile and beyond it rose more mountains and beyond them still more. The man who owned our cottage lived next door and made his own dry cured sausage and we would go round and eat it by the fire and talk about how fine the sausage tasted. On the hills all around there were deer, and in the evenings we would sit on...

I'm not a Hemingway guy. I yearn for internal dialogue, various and ladened spiritual questioning, and deep psychology in my characters. I prefer writing that is smooth and philosophical. Hemingway gives me little of this.But the settings of this book were beautiful, and the dialogue between characters, poignant. By the end, I found that Hemingway had craftily fucked with me to the point of my complete immersion into the novel. It made me cry.

Well, that was disappointing.For several months I've been focused on reading more classic literature, mostly as a way to dig deep and enrich my life during these trying political times. Until now, it has been an incredibly rewarding experience. This Hemingway novel was my first dud. I wanted to like this book. I've been reading more on World War I this past year and thought A Farewell to Arms would fit both my WWI interest and my goal of appreciating classics. But ol' Hem (as I learned to call h...

Once, there was a time when I would have struggled through this one, convinced that since it was a "classic", there must be some redeeming quality to it. I'd have struggled to the bitter end, hating it more and more, and I'd have been disappointed by it even if there was something worthwhile at the end. Because getting there was tedious, boring, painful, and annoying. This book has a lot of very varied reviews and opinions. Lots of people loved it, lots of people hated it. I can see why. It's a

For me think was a mediocre historical fiction / romance story set to the back drop of World War. I failed to connect with any of the characters as I listened to this one on audio and it became pretty annoying with the over use of certain words and I didn't engage with any of the dialogue which seemed trivial and never ending. A story of a young American Frederic Henry who volunteers for service with the Italian Army in World War I and falls in love with his English Nurse.I am not a fan of "roma...

An American studying architecture in Rome, Frederick Henry, is transformed into a Lt. in the Italian Army, when World War I starts. He volunteers even though America doesn't enter , the Great War, for another 3 years ! Why? He probably can't say, himself , but young men want excitement in their dull lives. He joins the ambulance corps on the northern front , in charge of four drivers , and a few motorcars, picking up the badly wounded soldiers, when feasible, the dead are carried outside the veh...

An absolute masterpiece about love and war written by Hemingway at the summit of his powers. We follow Henry, American ambulance driver in WWI at the Italian front between Milan and Venice. He falls in love with Catherine, an English nurse and goes off to the front. While sharing cheese and pasta with his camarades in a trench, he is nearly killed by an Austrian trench bomb. Catherine nurses him back to health, but is pregnant when he is sent back to the front. As the Italians start to retreat a...

There is something hopeless in love in the time of war...A Farewell to Arms was the first novel I have read in English and it was the book that has made the very strong impression on me so I can’t recall it without an attack of nostalgia ever since.And you’ll always love me won’t you? Yes. And the rain won’t make any difference? No.…till war do us part.

I've never read any Hemingway, so I thought to myself, 'Self, that is probably something you should remedy.' And now there are a couple of hours of my life that I will never get back. The macho posturing, the awful dialogue (if it were possible to have excised every word he put into the mouth of Catherine, I would have done so), the misogyny, the sometimes bizarre interactions between people... whatever the hell he was trying to do, for me it read as if everyone was either: 1) Certifiably insane...

Ernest Hemingway takes a lame story, and then he tells it in a boring way.

This one is pretty classic in nature. The novel set mainly in Wharton Itlay of 1917-18, the story focuses on Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver for the Italian army. He met a young English nurse, Catherine Barkley, at a military hospital and they begin a relationship which gradually becomes passionate. The story of the romance is set alongside a powerful portrayal of the horrors of war and its threat of the total destruction of civilization.

It is a strong story, beautiful and sad at the same time. It is a novel of war, a book of men who question, drink, go to the front brothel, fight, die or are wounded, and try to understand where it leads them. It is a love story that lasts an hour, a night, a life, which fills the void of man's solitude with the horror of war, which grows in the face of the absurdity of great words such as "duty and honour".A rich vocabulary and a very particular rhythm made of small sentences and numerous repet...