In general, Hemingway is a favorite author of mine. He doesn't mince words. Never too many words. He paints clear pictures as he writes and I like that. He does this in A Farewell to Arms, but in a manner that I found repetitious and long-winded. The dialogue is stinted and, IMHO, silly. It had been forty years since I last read this book and quite honestly was excited to read it again. Rereading a book after so long is often very close to reading it again. I was disappointed. I think because I didn't truly know what I was reading.
The description of the WWI battles in Italy towards the end of the war (1917) were very good. His description of what the men were going through, what their lives were like, is wonderfully put but the dialogue is what bogs it down. I began to simply scan over the dialogue as it was the descriptive pieces that were enjoyable- if describing the rough life of those on the front line assisting the wounded could be called wonderful!
Of course, this book, at is core, is about the love between Henry and Catherine, which to me seemed a bit forced at first. Again it was the dialogue between them that I found unrealistic, there was no depth between these two characters. It actually wasn't until the last third of the book that I began to believe in their love for one another. It was their stay in Switzerland, towards the end of the. book that I noted a tenderness that he had for her. And it literally wasn't until the last two or three pages that I even realized why he wrote the story the way he did. Perhaps if I had fully realized the type of memoire this book was/is, I would have enjoyed it more. The ending was tragic but it is the last paragraph that caused me to understand the book.
Even at that, though, I feel it is not his best work- even though I know it was a huge international success at the time. It is not a book I will recommend unless I am able to tell a bit of why I believe it was written in the way it was.
It is a memoire of a man during about 2 years of his life at the end of WWI who is writing in a stream of consciousness not just an event that redefined him as a person, but the events leading up to that point in his life. ( )

*DNF at 196*
Recently, I have been on a classics kick. Having never read Hemingway, I decided to give him a try, and boy, did I try! I really wanted to finish this book but it just infuriated me. His writing is so simple and lacks real depth. I had expected a grand and beautifully written novel but in reality it felt like something a child could have written. ( )

I read it, but I really didn't enjoy it. An American officer in the Italian Army ambulance corps in WWI. He meets a British nurse, falls in love (maybe?), gets wounded, the Italians get their butts kicked in the war and bad things happen. His relationship with the nurse is the very worst of early 20th century male-female dynamics. Really not a good book. ( )

"You are so brave and quiet I forget you are suffering"

I loved the dialogue style! It's almost ironic, in the true literary sense.
I also appreciated the divisions into five books, one for each stage of the story, which also matched geographical changes in setting. They also seem to match Shakespearean Act divisions and a typical plot line (introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution). Of course, it's more [book:Hamlet] than [book:Midsummer Night's Dream]. No surprise that Hemingway died by suicide. This is not a Little Miss Sunshine conclusion.

Also a good book to read with adult ESL students -- the diction and syntax is clear, and the story is not YA (as many classic lit novels studied in school are). Just have to watch out for the implied dialogue and movement, which could be missed by students newer to the language.

Much better than I expected, that's for sure! ( )