A Farewell to Arms

An incredibly disappointing and drab introduction to Hemingway.

The story follows Frederic Henry, an American in the Italian army during World War I, and his love affair with nurse, Catherine Barkley.
It starts off very slow, but suddenly turns quite gory when Henry arrives at the front. It was actually quite gripping and in terms of description it was thrilling. After this segment, the book takes it down a notch to the same level as before and focuses on building the world, its characters and establishing some kind of connection between the reader and the two lovebirds. However, it never quite succeeds at that.

I feel absolutely nothing for our main character. In the beginning of his relationship with Barkley, he straight up lies about show more loving her, and gets called out by her. For that reason, I always had a hint of disdain for Henry. Let's call it man's intuition in recognizing a foul character behind the veil that you wouldn't want near any female in your life, whether it's your sister, daughter or simply a friend. But along the way both of them declare their unyielding love to each other for some reason as no event really brings it forth. It sort of feel like those old 1930s flicks where all of a sudden, for no real reason at all, the two main characters can't help love each other. It feels forced and contrived. No matter how hard the book tried to put over this romance, I always sat back with a raised eyebrow.

About 98% of the dialogue in this book is so atrociously stale, and it rarely comes across as vaguely believable conversations between actual people. And that certainly goes for the so-called romance...
"Oh, I love you! Do you love me? Say you love me."
"Yes I love you."
"Oh, you're just saying that! It's the war. You don't mean it."
"Yes, I do."
"No, you don't"
"Yes, really."
"Ok, sure. Because I love you, but you don't have to lie to me."
Oh, my heartstrings can't take it any more! You'll be subjected to tedious dialogue like that multiple times throughout this book, and sometimes outright contradictions on the very same page. The way Henry and Barkley very often refer to each other as "my friend" is also very off-putting and does nothing but hinder its attempt to solidify the romance between them.

I probably feel the most for Catherine Barkley, even though a lot of her dialogue is unbearable. She's most likely still broken by the loss of her fiancée prior to this story and just want to be loved, but she then ends up with a schmuck - our main character. She tries to make the best of a bad situation, and want constant reassurance that everything is okay, although that is one thing that leads to a lot of a terrible dialogue because it's rarely varied and presented interestingly with some progress. It ends up like a broken record, and it gets old quickly. Barkley claims early on that she never drinks because she is an old-fashioned girl, but that certainly goes out later in the book, especially when she's pregnant, on doctor's orders. Quite poignant since all Henry does is drink, and drink, and drink. Whilst in a hospital, a nurse even says he should strop drinking to get jaundice just to get out of the war. That certainly does not keep him at bay, even when he's out of the war.

At certain points, the plot moves forward just for the sake of it without explaining why and how, such as during the retreat where the army starts executing lieutenants and Henry deserts the army to avoid such a fate. Or when Henry and Barkley are reunited in a hotel and the bartender suddenly obtains the information that Henry will be arrested in the morning. How did the army know where to find them? Why do they let the word slip out instead of just arresting him in the middle of the night when he won't see it coming? Who gave up Henry? Why is he so important to round up? Why are they executing people to begin with? Don't know. Don't think about it.

There are bright spots in the book, however, but they tend to be confined to smaller characters, where my favourites were Rinaldi and the Priest. Rinaldi is a cheeky Italian who feels a brotherly connection to Henry. Some of their back and forth banter is genuinely funny. The priest sprinkles a few words of wisdom here and there, which certainly was a positive inclusion. A smaller character, Aymo, was also a fun little addition, and I did feel a bit sad when he did not make it during the retreat.
I am not well-versed in WWI literature, and it serves only as a light backdrop in this book, so if you're after books on that subject, just stroll right along. As for love stories, do the same - stroll right along.

It's just such a shame, as I was really looking forward to reading this book, and desperately wanted to like it, as the name Hemingway radiates a kind of reverence in spite of whatever criticism has been laid upon him. Apparently, Hemingway wrote more than 30 different endings for this book, which is quite something since the one he decided to run with is so freaking terrible and has no payoff as it relies on you to buy into the contrived romance of the two main characters, and that you have a shroud of empathy for Henry. I didn't, and therefore the ending fell absolutely flat on its face, even though it obviously tries to touch the reader's feeling. My reaction was just, "REALLY? THAT is how it ends? What a waste of time..."

One of the few reasons I have for going forward with Hemingway is because one of his books inspired a great Metallica song - "For Whom the Bell Tolls". "A Farewell to Arms" certainly didn't give me any. Quite the opposite. show less

OMG, Hemingway! I took a seminar on him in college so I have all his books. Thirty years on, I'm in the process of rereading them. I remember having such mixed feelings about him in the class, and that hasn't changed a bit. On an intellectual level, I can appreciate his style, and how it changed how books were written. Despite, or perhaps because of, the paucity of words, this novel is easy to visualize. But he leaves a lot of work for the reader. You have to intuit the emotional content, because Hemingway doesn't reveal any of that. It's as if the entire thing is alt text, precise and workmanlike. But there's a LOT going on in this novel.

DESERTION VS DUTY: As an American living in Italy, Lt. Frederic Henry volunteers to serve in the show more Italian army during WWI as an ambulance driver. When Lt. Henry is wounded, he goes through the agony of recovery, falls in love with a nurse, and still returns to the front when he is able to do so. It is during the retreat, when wounded soldiers are abandoned, when the whole operation is a disaster that Henry begins to lose faith. Two of his men desert, and he shoots at them, killing one. (This was standard practice in WWI). Their ambulances get stuck in the mud and must be abandoned as they walk to where the army is regrouping. Another man deserts in the night, another man is killed by friendly fire, and eventually Henry is captured by the Italian police and is going to be shot as a German in disguise. It is then that he escapes and decides to abandon the army. It's all heady stuff, but there is NO emotion on the page. The reader has to guess what Henry is feeling by his actions, and it's not always clear. But the man has gone from being willing to sacrifice his life for abstract reasons to refusing to do so when the stupidity and uselessness of sacrifice become clear.

The love story is the same. The dialogue is utterly banal. Catherine Barkley is insipid and insecure. But Henry is deeply in love, or at least we imagine so because he goes through a lot of danger and effort to be with her. He does not abandon her when he so easily could. But despite 'doing what is right,' he still loses everything in the end. And as usual, the reader is left to imagine his pain.

So I still have mixed feelings about this story. Due to the simplicity of the language, it's a fast read. But because scenes and sections pass so quickly, one doesn't have time to think about what is actually happening. It's very easy to stay on the surface, and tempting to think that the surface is all there is. The entire story is between the lines; too much so, in many aspects. The only thing that is clear is that there is no reward for sacrifice. show less

One way or another, the world does you to death. Twin disasters, the Italian Army retreat at Caporetto in 1917 and the hero's love for an English nurse create a final crushing pathos to this outstanding novel. Every part of this novel, dialogue, the sparsity of its detail, the sublime passion of the love affair and the terse reality of wartime conditions keeps the reader in mind that we are sharing in an unforgettable story written by a stylist at the top of his game.

I must admit that while I have been mesmerised by anything Hemingway for some time now, it was a bit of an effort to get through the first half of this book. While my attitude towards the book changed each time I got back into it, I think the source of the problem for me was the emptiness that can only be expressed by those who have first-hand experience of large-scale conventional war. Nonetheless, and despite the historical background to the story, I found it to be written clearly in the present tense. Yet I couldn’t help but sense the emptiness I had once felt when I was about seven years old. I remember visiting, for no particular reason, an old war widow, who gave me two shillings (five cent pieces - one for me and the other for show more my sister) but then she cried and pointed to the faded photographs of her husband and her brothers who were all killed in the Second World War. The empty feeling of the interior of her dark house with its art deco furniture and the smell of stale tobacco smoke accompanied me throughout “A Farewell to Arms” and I think I avoided it until I decided that I would finish it off in one go. As the climax emerged suddenly towards the end of the book, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down. By this stage of the plot the war was almost an afterthought for the main characters and bits of classic Hemingway emerge (beards, boxing, and booze). But by the end, I needed some quiet time to emotionally recover. I’ve never cried from reading a book before. I still don’t like this book. Nevertheless, it is truly magnificent and how somebody in their mid-twenties could comprehend so much beggars belief. It can only be genius. show less

"A Farewell to Arms" is a story of love and war. Based on Hemingway’s own experience as an enlisted Red Cross ambulance driver for Italy during World War I, and written in Hemingway’s typical Modernist style, he tells the tale of Lieutenant Frederic Henry. Frederic is a young idealist and much like Hemingway himself, Frederic is courageous and adventurous. He naively volunteers for duty in someone else’s war simply for the experience. He boasts, “I knew I would not be killed. Not in this war. It did not have anything to do with me. It seemed no more dangerous to me than war in the movies.” (page 37)

And neither did he think he would fall in love. His tryst with the British nurse Catherine Barkley was initially a game, merely show more for amusement. Imagine his shock when he suffers severe battle injuries, and imagine his delight when Catherine becomes his bedside nurse. I was thoroughly impressed with Hemingway’s ability to tap into his sentimental emotions and write of this beautiful romance filled with tender moments and deep love. And kudos to Hemingway for creating a strong female character....brave, stoic, always giving, never complaining, hiding her pain and taking life as it comes with few expectations. Isn’t that how most women were during that era?

The moments of beauty are all the more poignant in the chaos of fighting a war. And there again, Hemingway was a genius in painting a picture. War is not one continuous battle of face to face combat. It’s the tedium of waiting, the anxiety and stress of the unknown, hunger, loneliness, and the spiritual turmoil. Is there a God, and how does he fit into this chaotic insanity? Year after year, through the changing of seasons, thousands of men are killed in battle, and many more maimed and spiritually broken. What struck me to the core was the amount of death that was caused by “friendly fire”. Deserters shot. Men perceived as traitors shot. How does anyone survive this lunacy? How are they ever able to return home at peace with themselves?

We watch the decline of Frederic’s enthusiasm and his diminishing sense of loyalty, as his idealistic notions turn into raw cynicism. One night at a bar Frederic philosophizes with a fellow officer who concludes, “He said we were all cooked but we were all right as long as we did not know it. We were all cooked. The thing was not to recognize it. The last country to realize they were cooked would win the war.” (page 129)

Some reviewers label "A Farewell to Arms" as an anti war book. But I think not. Frederic Henry certainly had a rude awakening in his war experience, but Hemingway revealed his true sentiments when he served as a journalist during the Spanish American War and later would receive a Bronze Star for Bravery for his contribution during World War II. This is a captivating, authentic story of love and war. show less

Set in Italy during WWI, the narrator of A Farewell to Arms is an American lieutenant serving with the Italian army as part of the ambulance corp (echoing Hemingway's own experience). On good terms with the Italian officers he is stationed with, his love affair with a local English nurse deepens when he is badly wounded by a shell, but once his convalescence is complete and he returns to the front he discovers that the summer has been a difficult one for his compatriots, and his war turns a very different corner.

Given Hemingway's first-hand experience of what he was writing about, this book felt very powerful on many levels. Less about the experiences of being in the middle of the fighting on the front-line battlefield (although at one show more point it touches on it in a hugely impacting way), it is more about the myriad of war experiences of the men involved in the Italian front in the border mountains with Austria-Hungary, especially while they were waiting for the bigger offensives to take place. As the protagonist is wounded, we experience the juxtaposition of life in untouched Milan, where normality continues to a large extent, and the difficulty of then returning to a much changed war. The depictions of being part of a losing army that is being pushed back were deeply moving and engrossing, and Hemingway puts us front and centre in the middle of the confusions, heightened emotions and dangers that arose during the chaos of a major retreat.

At its core, this book is the story of a love affair being conducted in the thick of the war. The protagonist's lover is very much a woman of that time, focused on doing whatever keeps her man happy. If you can't stomach that outdated portrayal of a relationship then perhaps this is not the book for you. However, if you take it for what it is - a fictional account of a war relationship from a very different era - it's a terrific read. His sentence style is a little bizarre at times (on occasions he jumps around topics between commas requiring some rereading to get the flow of the sentence properly), but the occasional choppiness in style somehow fits the tensions of the time where one couldn't afford to think too deeply and long-term about anything.

Overall, I'm surprised and delighted by my first Hemingway. It was a fabulous page-turner, and I'll definitely be back for more.

4.5 stars - one of the most authentic wider war experience books I've read to date. show less

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, 2) an alien with no knowledge of human interaction or 3) a certifiably insane alien with no knowledge of human interaction. A vapid book full of vapid people.