A Farewell To Arms | Ernest Hemingway

A Farewell To Arms | Ernest Hemingway | Profound. Sad. Moving.

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A Farewell To Arms

	A Farewell To Arms Ernest Hemingway Scribner, 1995 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 374 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto -- of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized -- is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was 30 years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.

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__Underscore.

What beauty. What excellent prose. There is little I can say that has not already been said about Hemingway's style. So, I will keep my review short and blunt. This is one of the select few finest American literary works of the twentieth century. If you have any interest in Hemingway's writing, this novel is a must-read.

Profound. Sad. Moving.

I admit I am but a fledgling Hemingway reader..
Definitely not yet an aficianado of the canon!
There are times when I still falter over his simplistic style, his reporter-like, almost point-form and unembellished narration. His pithy dialogue which seems at times so unusual that I am jarred into the realization that I am holding a book in my hands.
But this book, A Farewell To Arms was a fantastic read and has given me a new appreciation, I guess, for Hemingwayism in general.
Genre-wise, it is somewhat of a historical romance, perhaps.
Set squarely in WWI Italy and Switzerland. Lots of war, lots of rain, lots of gore, lots of pain.
I hesitate from saying too much about the novel, story-wise, because truly there are many ways that one could ruin it, by saying too much, especially as regards its increasingly-paced and unforgettably moving final sections. [The novel is broken down into five parts, books, or sections].
For me as a reader, one of the key things [feelings] I am left with is an overwhelming sense of the simultaneous dual-existence of meaninglessness and meaningfulness. I feel that this is a theme or thread running the length of the novel.
There is the meaninglessnes of war. The seemingly arbitrary way that beautiful things can be so quickly taken from us, be they dignity, or love, or life itself. The suddenness of bone-crunching shrapnel in the midst of friendly camaraderie... bombs putting an end to meaningful conversation. War is a perpetual mess, needing to be cleaned up.
But alongside this "meaninglessness" [what I am calling meaninglessness for lack of a better term], Hemingway paints a searing portrait of love and the meaningfulness of intimate relationship.
Lt. Henry's [solidly requited] love for the Scottish nurse Catherine Barkley is like flashes of color thrown into the clattering frames of a black-and-white newsreel. It was meaningfulness, inserted into mayhem.
It was something beautiful, growing, thriving and enduring in a field of ugliness, disaster and loss.
The novel ended with the tears of two men.
Lt. Henry's.
And mine.
I could say so much more about #74 on the list of the 100 Best Books of All Time, but I won't.
I will simply ask a question and then answer it:
In A Farewell To Arms, does Hemingway show us that the meaningfulness of love and goodness and hopes and dreams are altogether something too good to be true?
No.
He shows us that all of these things are too good, and true!

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A good, quick read

The great American novelist doesn't disappoint.

Jake, a likable but disabled incarnation of a rather classic Hemingway character, struggles as an impotent in a love square for the affections of the quasi-royal Lady Ashley.

Set primarily in Spain during Fiesta, Hemingway's portrayal of decadence, overconsumption, and the breakdown of Judeo-Christian values in post-WWI Europe makes for a hard to put down story. And unlike some of Hemingway's other works, it doesn't leave the reader feeling like hell at the end.

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