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Loading... The Sun Also Risesby Ernest Hemingway
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. I am not an aficionado of Hemingway's writing. His style is nice. It's a swell style. But it is too easy to parody. ( )Ernest Hemingway's novel, The Sun Also Rises, is one of my favorite books. This was the first book I'd ever read by Hemingway and it totally changed my outlook on what a good book really is. Hemingway not only drags you into the lives of the characters but he submerges you in their self-destructive and wild lifestyles, all done in such a matter of fact manner that is over all quite captivating. The Sun Also Rises is not a novel of fast paced, full action exciting events it is simply life particularly the life of Jake (the protagonist). Its a sad and realistic story of everything that happens in such short time and in the end at last you get something that tells you 'this book made sense and yes we do have reason'. To put it lamely you get hope in the pure shining fact that "The Sun Also Rises. ....This was my first book review by the way :) I've always wanted to read this one; and a lovely BCer sent it to me. I aim to read it this year. If not, next year. As it says on the back cover, this book encapsulates the angst of the so-called "Lost Generation" after World War I. It has less plot and more art than I am used to in my books, but I forced myself to continue reading and ended up quite enjoying it. The primary metaphor of the novel is that of bulls and steers--bulls (both actual bulls and most human males) being violent idiots that need to be corralled and made part of the herd by steers (both actual steers and guys like our first person narrator, Jake, who lost his manhood in the war). The center of everyone's attention is Lady Brett Ashley, who pretty much gets with everyone (or everyone wants to get with her), including Robert Cohn and a bullfighter in Pamplona, but not, of course, her apparent true love, Jake. She is a corrosive influence on Jake and the "bulls" (and on the bullfighter, who gets beat up over her), and the book ends with Brett saying, "Oh, Jake, we could have had such a damned good time together," and Jake answering, "Yes. Isn't it pretty to think so?" Jake and the reader know that probably isn't true. Plot-wise, not much happens. They are in Paris, then go fishing, and then to the week-long fiesta in Pamplona (running of the bulls, bull-fights, and more often than not, eating and drinking to excess). At the end, Jake goes to Madrid to get Brett. Hemingway is, indeed, a sparse writer--something about the prose drives you on quickly to the end. Also one of the quickest books I've read (2 days). Interesting read and experience (12 years late--was assigned for an AP English class I dropped). Amazing how fresh this feels. 0.035 seconds to build listing no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com (ISBN 0743297334, Paperback)The Sun Also Rises first appeared in 1926, and yet it's as fresh and clean and fine as it ever was, maybe finer. Hemingway's famously plain declarative sentences linger in the mind like poetry: "Brett was damned good-looking. She wore a slipover jersey sweater and a tweed skirt, and her hair was brushed back like a boy's. She started all that." His cast of thirtysomething dissolute expatriates--Brett and her drunken fiancé, Mike Campbell, the unhappy Princeton Jewish boxer Robert Cohn, the sardonic novelist Bill Gorton--are as familiar as the "cool crowd" we all once knew. No wonder this quintessential lost-generation novel has inspired several generations of imitators, in style as well as lifestyle.Jake Barnes, Hemingway's narrator with a mysterious war wound that has left him sexually incapable, is the heart and soul of the book. Brett, the beautiful, doomed English woman he adores, provides the glamour of natural chic and sexual unattainability. Alcohol and post-World War I anomie fuel the plot: weary of drinking and dancing in Paris cafés, the expatriate gang decamps for the Spanish town of Pamplona for the "wonderful nightmare" of a week-long fiesta. Brett, with fiancé and ex-lover Cohn in tow, breaks hearts all around until she falls, briefly, for the handsome teenage bullfighter Pedro Romero. "My God! he's a lovely boy," she tells Jake. "And how I would love to see him get into those clothes. He must use a shoe-horn." Whereupon the party disbands. But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece--one of them, anyway--and no matter how many times you've read it or how you feel about the manners and morals of the characters, you won't be able to resist its spell. This is a classic that really does live up to its reputation. --David Laskin (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:57 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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