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A review by hadeanstars
A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
5.0
It's never easy to review a Hemingway, it feels rather superfluous, because it's inevitably going to be somewhere between excellent and unsurpassed. Well, in most cases in my experience with the single exception of 'Across the River and Into the Trees.' A Farewell to Arms has all the magic of a timeless classic, it has the languid, liquid easy quality of greatness about it, a complete mastery of dialogue, and some powerful and evocative themes. It's a war story and a love story, a farce and a tragedy. Indeed, it defies easy categorisation as every truly great work does. In this respect Hemingway stands apart in a rare canon, like Lawrence and Mishima, you pick up one of these authors and you know you are in the presence of genius. There is a complexity and maturity in these writer's works that stands apart.
Hemingway's central characters are always hard-bitten, a little world-weary; they wouldn't be out of place in a film-noir, played by Bogart or maybe a young Richard Burton. It gives you a shiver to read it. I most of all love the way that he never explains his characters' motivations, you have to infer motive from their choices and their conversations. You're an observer, not a participant. This approach draws out all of the insanity of the war that 'Tenente' Henry barely lives through. And it's commonly speculated that this novel is mostly autobiographical, a roman a clef; if so, it's a wonder he didn't die from drink.
Not at the peerless level of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' - which has to be in the top 5 of the great books of our time - but a marvel nonetheless. A true classic Hemingway.
Hemingway's central characters are always hard-bitten, a little world-weary; they wouldn't be out of place in a film-noir, played by Bogart or maybe a young Richard Burton. It gives you a shiver to read it. I most of all love the way that he never explains his characters' motivations, you have to infer motive from their choices and their conversations. You're an observer, not a participant. This approach draws out all of the insanity of the war that 'Tenente' Henry barely lives through. And it's commonly speculated that this novel is mostly autobiographical, a roman a clef; if so, it's a wonder he didn't die from drink.
Not at the peerless level of 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' - which has to be in the top 5 of the great books of our time - but a marvel nonetheless. A true classic Hemingway.